CHAPTER SIX

The Ascending Lark

Mary’s birthday was on September twenty-ninth, the feast of St Michael and all Angels. Last year her birthday had fallen on a Sunday, but that year, when she reached six, her birthday fell on a school day. It was a warm, clear morning, and Mary sat like a princess at the breakfast table, in a crown of marigolds Mother had made from those still flowering in the garden. She wore her best dress and her happiest smile as she looked at her little pile of presents that lay among their tissue wrappings on the table in front of her.

Mary’s smile (even now she is a grown woman it is still the same) has always been a smile of extraordinary loveliness, transforming her thin, serious face into something quite dazzling.

There was not the money for large or expensive presents, but Therese and I had sewn her a doll with a pretty dress and bonnet. The fiddly bits were slightly grubby from the sweat of our concentration, and I had left a bloodstain from a pricked finger on the doll’s face, but Mary didn’t seem to notice. She loved it, and she loved the necklace that Mother had saved from her own childhood, and the blue cardigan Grandma had knitted to match Mary’s best dress. She loved everything. I can remember thinking, with a twinge of guilt at my cynicism, how easily pleased you are when you’re only six.

Mary gave a huge sigh of contentment, and then turned her attention to the menu for tea. We were allowed to choose whatever we liked, within reason, for our birthday teas, and usually spent weeks beforehand deciding and planning and changing our minds—yes, even Therese and I, although we pretended to be so grown-up as to be above such things.

Mary was quite sure what she wanted. She raised her small, determined chin, fixing her earnest grey eyes on Mother’s face. ‘I would like orang-outang pie,’ she said.

Mother looked slightly at a loss.

‘What did you say, Mary?’ asked Therese.

‘Orang-outang pie,’ repeated Mary, her voice faltering a little as she read the bewilderment on our faces. ‘I would like orangoutang pie.’

Mother’s face cleared and she began to laugh, ‘Oh, Mary! You mean lemon meringue pie!’

The wave of our laughter shattered Mary’s fragile dignity, and she began to cry.

‘Mary, my love, of course you shall have it,’ said Mother, trying to compose her face. ‘Is there anything else you would like especially?’

‘Candles,’ whispered Mary, abashed, ‘on my cake.’

‘There will be candles!’ promised Mother. ‘And lemon meringue pie. Now make haste to school, girls, or you’ll be late.’

Therese and I took Mary and Beth down as far as the county primary school, and stayed to wave goodbye to them as they went in at the gate. Mary was happy again when we left her, still wearing her best dress and a crown of marigolds. Her eyes shone like candles, and she held her head high as she walked down the path to the school building, clutching her bag which held her birthday treasures, ready to show the teacher. We watched them go, and then continued on our way to the high school for girls.

The school motto which decorated our blazer pockets was the same as that of the Royal Air Force, Per ardua ad astra, exhorting us through hard work to reach for the stars. It was a school proud of its academic record, and all the lovely possibilities of that motto were ignored in favour of the one dry interpretation, ‘Pass your exams.’ The only stars we were encouraged to yearn for within those walls were the little gold, gummed-paper shapes that the younger pupils earned for good work.

Since it was Monday, I was condemned to failure by the timetable before I even entered the gates: geography, chemistry, French, and a double lesson of mathematics. The day was redeemed marginally by an English lesson at the end of the afternoon. I struggled through a confusion of isobars, alkaline reaction, petits dialogues, and trigonometry, to collapse wearily into my chair for the English lesson, with a sigh of relief. We were spending the autumn term studying the English Romantic poets, and the present focus of our attention was Shelley. We had been reading his poetry for two weeks now—or rather listening to Mrs Freeman read it. We took up where we had left off the previous lesson, halfway through the romantic wallowings of the tragic tale ‘Rosalind and Helen’.

Mrs Freeman ploughed on and on through stanza after stanza, and the self-indulgent, purple language at first annoyed me, then began to seem unbearable, and finally hilarious. Mrs Freeman’s voice shook with emotion as she flicked over to page 188, the class meekly following her progress in their dog-eared, ink-stained textbooks, yellowed with age.

 

And first, I felt my fingers sweep

The harp, and a long quivering cry

Burst from my lips in symphony…

 

Mrs Freeman declaimed in low and trembling tones.

 

… The dusk and solid air was shaken

As swift and swifter the notes came

From my touch that wandered like quick flame,

And from my bosom labouring

With some unutterable thing.

The awful sound of my own voice made

My lips tremble—

 

‘Is something the matter, Melissa?’ Mrs Freeman stopped in mid-flow and fixed me with a look of withering contempt. I could no more control the broad grin on my face than I had been able to restrain the snort of laughter that had escaped from me.

‘Melissa? Something is amusing you? Perhaps you would explain to the class?’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Freeman,’ I gasped, trying to conquer the waves of mirth that were still rising. ‘It’s nothing really. It’s just… it’s just… well, the poetry’s so silly!’

Mrs Freeman looked at me in silence, and I felt the tension as she weighed up in her mind whether to approach the situation with an Enlightened Class Discussion, or to treat it as a Very Serious Matter. I was lucky. She plumped for the former.

‘What a very interesting comment, Melissa. Can you explain just what you mean? Shelley’s poetry has been loved and revered by the learned and the great, and yet you find it “silly”?’

‘It is silly,’ I said, with a sudden flash of reckless irritation. ‘He takes himself too seriously. It’s as though he’s forgotten how to laugh at himself, so that it’s not real any more, like when Beth, my little sister, is in a bad mood and goes off into Mother’s bedroom to practise making miserable faces in the mirror. And not only that; my mother says—’

I stopped. There was a dangerous glint in Mrs Freeman’s eye. Maybe she wouldn’t want to hear what Mother had to say on the subject of Shelley’s poetry.

‘Yes?’ said Mrs Freeman, but her tone of voice was not all that encouraging, ‘And what does your mother say, Melissa?’

‘Mother says, that love is only true love when it shows itself in fidelity—um, faithfulness. She says if a person has the feeling of love, but no faithfulness, his love is just self-indulgent sentimentality. And that’s what Shelley was like, isn’t it? He wrote fine poems to his wife and his lovers, but he wasn’t a faithful man. So how can his poetry about love be worth anything if his love in real life wasn’t worth anything?’

‘Well, I understand what you’re trying to say, Melissa,’ said Mrs Freeman, kindly, ‘but you must realise, Shelley was a very great artist—a free spirit and a philosopher. He was not quite like other men. That was part of his greatness.’

I could see she wanted that to be the end of it, but I had the light of battle in my eyes now. I wasn’t Mother’s daughter for nothing.

‘Does that mean if I can write poetry like this it doesn’t matter if I keep my promises then?’ I said.

Mrs Freeman’s face wore a slight frown of irritation.

‘Melissa,’ she said patiently, ‘Shelley was a very young man, and you are very young. You still have a great deal to learn. Now, how about the rest of the class? What do you think of the poem we have just been reading? Shirley?’

Shirley looked up from the complicated doodle she was perfecting in her notebook. She cleared her throat.

‘It’s… it’s… it’s got some good description in it…’ she ventured wildly.

‘Norma?’ said Mrs Freeman coldly.

‘I don’t know, really,’ said Norma helplessly. ‘It’s a bit long and complicated. Perhaps he would have been better to write a proper story.’

Mrs Freeman drew a long, deep breath, and let it go in a sigh of discouragement. ‘Let’s leave it there for today,’ she said, in a flat sort of voice. ‘You can take down your homework in the last ten minutes. I will write the title for your essay on the board. Please have the plan ready for the next lesson. It may help you to read the introductory note to Lyrical Ballads, which starts after the foreword and the preface.’

I felt mean, somehow, as though I had squashed something precious for her. She had been so absorbed in the poem. It was like Mary at the breakfast table, the sparkle in her eyes extinguished by our thoughtless laughter. I felt horrid inside, guilty. It must be rotten to be a teacher sometimes, to face a blank sea of faces, resisting you. It was as though we weren’t people for the teachers, and they weren’t people for us. Worse than enemies. Strangers. And yet… and yet the poem was silly, and dishonest too, somehow. A lot of words without truth or goodness behind them… I wrote down the homework, glad of the end of the day, but the lesson left a sour taste in my mouth. I wished I’d never said anything in the first place.

I waited for Therese after school and we walked slowly up the hill together. There was something kind and sensible about Therese that always made life seem safe and normal again, when fear or questioning or trouble invaded me. Even Therese looked gloomy today, though.

‘Lilian did copy my essay,’ she said, as we plodded up the hill. ‘Mrs Freeman was cross about it, and told her off in class. Lilian won’t speak to me at all, now.’

‘She won’t speak to you! It ought to be the other way round!’ Therese shook her head. ‘She’s my friend,’ she said sadly, ‘but come on ‘lissa! Mary will be waiting for her birthday tea! Let’s hurry up.’

It was a new idea to me that you could go on being someone’s friend even when they’d done something awful to you, even when you felt as though you didn’t like them any more. I quickened my pace to match Therese’s. Lilian didn’t seem worth it to me.

As we reached the gate, the door flew open, and Mary’s eager, radiant face met us. ‘Come and see my cake!’ she cried. ‘It says “Mary” and there are flowers and candles!’

It was a beautiful birthday cake, iced white with pink rosebuds. Six of the rose-buds on the top had little candles stuck in them, and Mary’s name was written across the middle in pale green icing.

The birthday tea was wonderful, with crisps and tiny sausages, little cubes of cheese and grapes and three kinds of sandwiches, brandy-snaps filled with whipped cream, and a huge lemon meringue pie as well as the cake. There was a big jug of Mother’s homemade lemonade to wash it all down.

We ate every crumb, and drank every drop, but before we cut up the cake we lit the candles and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Mary, and she blew out all her candles in one go, with a bit of help from Cecily. After tea, the little ones went out to play in the garden, pink and sticky and content.

Therese and I helped Mother clear away the tea things before we did our homework. As Therese went down the step into the kitchen, carrying the big blue and white jug that held the lemonade, she missed her footing, and the jug shot from her hands and smashed into a thousand pieces on the tiled floor. There was a horrified silence, and Therese looked at Mother with pink cheeks and shocked eyes full of tears.

‘It was an accident,’ said Mother resignedly. ‘Get the brush and dustpan, Therese, and sweep it up. Get every little bit, now, because Cecily runs about barefoot in this warm weather.’

Therese swept up all the pieces, and took them, well wrapped in newspaper, to the dustbin.

‘It was my favourite jug,’ said Mother sadly, as Therese went out of earshot, round the corner of the house, ‘but there’s nothing to be gained by shouting at her. Things just fly out of her hands. I have to say to myself, “She’s like Brother Theo, she doesn’t do it on purpose, don’t be cross.”’

My ears pricked up at this. ‘Like who? Is it a story? Who was Brother Theo?’

‘Yes, there’s a story. At bedtime I’ll tell you.’ Therese came in from the garden, looking miserable. ‘I am sorry, Mother. It was your favourite jug.’

‘Darling, it couldn’t be helped. Come on now and do your homework, while I wash up these things.’

I hurried through my math homework, uneasily aware of having done some very shaky calculations, and did the reading and essay plan Mrs Freeman had asked for. The little ones came in from the garden for their baths as I was writing, and I could hear them in the bathroom, arguing about whose turn it was to sit on the plug, and Mother’s tired voice growing impatient. I finished off my work quickly, and went to help her towel them dry and shepherd them up to the bedroom.

They played their game of trumpeting elephants and scuttling mice, and said their prayers, and then Mary and Beth wriggled into their beds while Cecily curled up on Mother’s lap, squeaking softly, ‘Weakness! Weakness!’ as Mother stroked her hair.

At last the day was over. The sunset had blazed its last splendid banners and subsided to a dusky crimson afterglow. I drew the curtains on it, and lit the candle.

‘You said there was a story. Mother,’ I said, unable to contain myself any longer. ‘You said there was at teatime; about Brother Theo. Are you going to tell us now? Is it—’

‘Hush,’ said Mother. ‘You’re filling the air with excitement. It’s calm and quiet we need for a story. Yes, I’ll tell you about Brother Theo; when you’re ready to listen.’

We all settled down and waited, and into the silence Cecily began to sing in her high reedy voice:

 

Free blind mice, free blind mice,

See how they run, see how they run,

They all run after the farmer’s wife

And cut her up with a carving knife…

 

‘Hush now,’ laughed Mother. ‘Listen to the story. Here, put your thumb in your mouth. That’s better.’ Cecily cuddled in close to Mother, and a vacant, drowsy look came into her eyes as she sucked her thumb, held warm and close in the candlelight. Beth yawned a huge yawn.

‘I am six now,’ said Mary. ‘I am a big girl. I have had a lovely day.’

‘Have you, Mary?’ said Mother, pleased. ‘I’m glad it was a nice birthday. Snuggle down now.’

‘Please, Mother,’ I ventured.

‘Ssh,’ she said.

Brother Theodore was a novice at the Abbey of St Alcuin. He was always in trouble; he’d been in trouble all his life. It wasn’t really his fault. His father had been telling him to take that look off his face ever since he could remember, but try as he might, he’d never been able to reassemble his features to suit him, and he continually aggravated and disappointed his father in a thousand other ways, too. He was slow and dreamy and inattentive, a forgetter of messages and a bodger of errands. He wanted to join in the games that the other children played, but he couldn’t throw straight, and he couldn’t catch a ball, nor could he run without tripping on his own feet, which were large and clumsy like the rest of him. When he was seven years old, he went to learn his letters, along with the other lads of his village, under the tuition of Father Marcus, the parish priest, but he was a poor pupil, never knowing what he had been asked to do, though his work was good enough when he did it. Taken all round, he was a child born to get under the skin of authority and irritate, and whippings and scoldings were his daily fare. Things didn’t improve much when, on his thirteenth birthday, his father apprenticed him to the iron-fisted, sullen-faced village blacksmith, to learn a trade and make his way in the world. From his new master, as from his father and his teacher, he attracted nothing but beatings and derision, for the blacksmith was a surly and impatient man with neither imagination nor kindness to spare for his gangling and butter-fingered apprentice, whose incompetence was pushed to ridiculous lengths by his fear.

The one source of comfort and loving-kindness in the poor boy’s life was his grandmother: a dear, wise, gentle old lady to whom he brought all his tears and his troubles from his babyhood until she died, when he was fifteen. She had been a devout woman, and from her he had learned in early childhood to love the Mass and to pray and to trust to God’s goodness in spite of adversity. Her death reverberated in shock waves through his loneliness, and having no one else now in whom to confide, he clung in prayer to Christ crucified, and began more and more to long for the monastic life of prayer and service lived to God’s glory.

Just after his eighteenth birthday, already world-weary, sad and sporting a black eye which was his parting gift from his father— who bitterly resented the waste of the money he had laid out on his son’s apprenticeship—the young man entered the community of Benedictines at St Alcuin’s. He came as much in the mood of a man seeking sanctuary as anything else, though there burned somewhere within him a small flame of hope that here, if anywhere, he would find acceptance and brotherhood, a place to belong. His name had rung in his ears like a clap of thunder in the mouths of irate parents and teachers until he was glad to hear the last of it when he made his novitiate vows and was clothed in the habit of the order, and tonsured, and given his new name which was Brother Theodore. He began his new life churning with mixed emotions: lingering grief for his grandmother, a sense of shame at his inability to succeed at anything, all mixed with a passionate longing to serve God well and to be a good monk. But for all his good intentions, here, too, he was always in trouble.

Father Matthew avowed that Theodore was the only novice who could slam a door opening it as well as shut ting it. He was almost always late for his lessons, and sometimes for the Office too, however hard he tried to be in the right place at the right time. His habit was stained, torn and patched, and his hair around the tonsure looked like a crow’s nest. He dreaded the days when it was his turn to wait on the brothers at table, in case a pewter plate should slip from his fingers and fall with a crash, caus ing the reader to lose his place and the silent monks to smile or glare according to temperament; or lest the pitcher should slip in his hands and he should splash water into someone’s soup.

Poor Brother Theo. He was a thorn in Father Matthew’s side; Father Matthew being neat and careful in all he did, and tidy and well-groomed to the point of suavity. Father Matthew found Theodore exasperating beyond what his patience could endure, and berated him daily for his carelessness and clumsiness. He was determined to mould even this unpromising specimen of a novice into the quiet, unobtrusive, recollected character which was the monastic ideal; by exhortation, by penance, and occasionally even by the rod.

Theodore saw his hopes of a new beginning turn to ashes in the miserable discovery that even men who had given their whole lives to follow Christ could be irritable, sharp-tongued and hasty to one like himself.

In spite of this sad realisation, life was not all misery, for amidst his habitual diet of failure and disgrace, Theo found in the monastery three places of refuge—sources of comfort and even of delight. The first was the scriptorium, for here, astonishingly, he proved to have an uncommon talent in the art of manuscript illumination, and a fair hand as a copyist, producing work of elegance and beauty.

He also discovered that he was musically gifted and could express in composition the same exquisite harmony and balance that showed in his manuscript work but was so disastrously lacking in all other areas of his life. So his second place of refuge was with the precentor, Brother Gilbert, with whom he spent time working on new settings for the Mass and the psalms and canticles, harmonising his clear and pleasant tenor with Brother Gilbert’s baritone. Brother Gilbert treated him with friendship and respect—respect well-deserved too—and for this Theodore was grateful indeed. His family was one where there was neither interest nor pleasure in music or art, and these subjects were a new experience for him. Brother Gilbert and Brother Clement who oversaw the library and scriptorium noticed with interest that as Theodore was able to forget his self-consciousness and lose himself in the creative work he loved, so his clumsiness dropped away from him; and with ink and brush and pen and parchment he was deft and precise in all he did. They made no comment, but being artists themselves they understood, as Father Matthew did not, Brother Theodore’s temperament.

Theo’s third bolt-hole was the abbot’s lodging, for he was often required by Father Peregrine to copy borrowed manuscripts for the abbey library, or to write at Peregrine’s dictation now that his own hands served no longer for more than writing brief letters of an informal nature. It was a relief to find in Father Peregrine someone more clumsy even than himself and even more likely than he to spill food on its way to his mouth, or send a stream of ale shooting over the edge of a mug instead of safely into the middle of it. Neither did Father Peregrine glare at him, or wither him with icy sarcasm when the door handle slipped out of his nerveless fingers and the door crashed shut behind him. On the contrary, he treated him with unfailing gentleness and courtesy, and Brother Theodore found himself more relaxed and less clumsy as a consequence in Father Peregrine’s company than with anyone else.

It had been some while now since Brother Theo had had the opportunity to do any copying or illuminating, or to make any music. It was the time for the hay harvest, and all able-bodied brothers who could possibly be spared from their usual work had been helping with the harvest, from the reaping until it was safely gathered and stacked, the barns filled against the lean months of winter. It had been a good year, with a warm, wet spring and dry breezy weather for the time of the harvest, so the whole community had sweated to get the hay in before the weather should break. The harvest was in now, and none too soon, for the heavy, stifling heat threatened thunder and rain.

With the barns full, the daily routine could be resumed. On the last day of the harvest, the brothers gathered in the community room after supper, weary and happy to relax for an hour before Compline.

Father Chad leaned back against the wall with a comfortable sigh, stretching his legs out before him. ‘Your novices will welcome a day’s rest after the work they’ve put in this week, Brother,’ he remarked peacefully to Father Matthew, who sat beside him on the bench.

‘Rest?’ said Father Matthew in surprise. ‘No, we shall be back to work as usual tomorrow. The lot I have at the moment are so slow with their Greek we could ill afford the week we’ve lost.’

Father Chad looked at him in disbelief. ‘Matthew, you’re jesting! They always have a day off after the harvest! Well, that is to say, when I was in the novitiate under Father Lucanus, we did….’

There was a slightly chilly pause. ‘That possibly accounts for your difficulties with New Testament Greek, Father Prior,’ said Father Matthew with calm disdain.

Father Chad, chastened, and unable to deny this deficiency, had no more to say.

The weary young men were back to work at half-past six on the following morning, with barely time beforehand to swallow their dry bread and water on which they broke their fast after the first Mass. Having kept them at their study of Greek for the better part of the morning, Father Matthew rather grudgingly gave them the three-quarters of an hour that remained after the community chapter meeting and before the midday Office of Sext for their own private reading and meditation.

Brother Theodore went up to his cell armed with a copy of Boethius’ De Trinitate and the Dialogues of St Gregory. It was warm, almost hot, in his cell on this lazy summer day, and Theo could scarcely keep his eyes open as he read, his body still pleasantly aching and fatigued from the week’s labour in the fields.

In the end, he laid his head on his arms (‘I’ll just close my eyes for one minute,’ he said to himself) and slept as he sat: deep, satisfying sleep.

He awoke with a start, and listened. How long had he been sleeping? There was not a sound, nobody about. He dashed down the stairs to the chapel, paused warily outside the door and listened. They were already singing the Kyrie Eleison; that meant the Office was almost finished. He groaned inwardly. If he went in now, he would have to stand by himself in the place of disgrace reserved for latecomers, for the third time this week. Then would follow a cutting rebuke from Father Matthew, and kneeling to confess his fault before the abbot, to be given yet another penance.

Theodore’s courage failed him. Already this week he had been in trouble for breaking a mug, for coming late to the Office and to instruction, for knocking over a stool with a terrible crash, and for singing during the Great Silence after Compline. He hadn’t even realised he was singing! A new tune for the Magnificat was forming in his head, and he had sung softly without realising it as the phrases came together. Father Matthew, over-hearing, had hissed in his ear, ‘For shame, Brother Theodore,’ and scowled at him frostily. He had been loaded with rebukes and penances and admonition until he was weary of life and of himself.

He turned away from the chapel door and plodded back up to his cell, where he sat down on his bed and stared gloomily at the crucifix on the wall, wondering what to do next. ‘Lord have mercy,’ he said wistfully, and then, ‘Oh, God,’ and sighed, and waited.

Before long the Office was ended, and he could hear the distant sounds of the brothers making their way to the refectory for the midday meal. Should he go down and slip in among them, in the hope that Father Matthew had not noticed his absence in the chapel? Not a chance. Better to go now to the scriptorium and begin his afternoon work and hope to avoid Father Matthew altogether, at least until the evening.

So Theo went to the scriptorium, sat down in his study alcove and looked at the page from the Book of Hours he was illuminating. He began to feel more cheerful at once, and was soon absorbed in his work, lost in concentration until the bell sounded for None, the afternoon Office. As soon as he heard the bell, he laid his work aside, determined for once to be on time, and bounded down the stairs to collide forcibly with Father Matthew at the foot of them, nearly knocking the wind out of the novice master’s body.

Father Matthew looked at him with the expression of a man using extreme self-control. Brother Theodore began miserably to apologise, but Father Matthew cut him short. ‘You were not in your place at the midday meal, Brother, nor were you present for the Office. Have you any explanation?’

‘O God, O God,’ thought Theodore. ‘Now what?’ Then it was as though all of a sudden something snapped inside him, and he heard himself saying, ‘Father Abbot needed me to do some copying work for him, Father.’

‘And he detained you through the Office and the midday meal?’ asked Father Matthew in surprise.

‘Yes, Father.’

‘That’s not like him,’ said Father Matthew, with a puzzled frown.

‘It was urgent, Father. He has a manuscript on loan that he wishes to copy before it is returned.’

‘Very well, Brother,’ said Father Matthew. ‘It’s odd, though. He usually lets me know if he has to keep one of the novices from their instruction or from the Office. It must have slipped his mind. Anyway, make haste now, or we shall be late. You’d better get yourself something to eat afterwards; you must be hungry.’

‘Thank you, Father,’ mumbled Brother Theo wretchedly, and followed his superior into the church.

It was in the peaceful hour after supper and before Compline that Father Matthew encountered Father Peregrine in the cloister.

‘I would be grateful, Father, if you would remember to tell me when you require Brother Theodore to work for you,’ he said, in tones of mild disapproval. ‘He has already been in trouble almost continually this month, and I am having to watch him strictly. Today he was missing from both the midday Office and the midday meal, but when I took him to task over it, I find he was detained by yourself. Father, it is difficult enough to try to teach him discipline. If I don’t know where he is it becomes impossible.’

Peregrine’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, and he blinked at Father Matthew. Then he said, ‘What are the things he has been in trouble for?’

‘Father, the list is endless. He is careless, he is clumsy, he is late, he is noisy, he breaks things, he loses things; his behaviour is undisciplined in the extreme—why, last night I caught him singing during the Great Silence.’

‘Singing, you say?’ said Father Peregrine. ‘I would have thought he had precious little to sing about!’

‘Exactly so, Father. I have done all I can. He has been rebuked, he has been given penance, I have admonished him repeatedly. I have even resorted to the scourge.’

‘Yes, I can imagine,’ said Father Peregrine thoughtfully, ‘and it makes it more difficult for you when you don’t know what he’s up to, or where he is, of course. I am too often thoughtless and forgetful. I ask your pardon. I have some work outstanding that I need him for in the morning. Perhaps you would send him to me.’

‘Of course, Father,’ said Father Matthew, and their conversation ended there.

In the morning, Brother Theo, by a great effort, managed to be in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing, and arrived for the morning novitiate instruction feeling cautiously optimistic, to be greeted by Father Matthew saying frigidly, ‘Father Abbot requires you this morning, Brother Theodore. You are excused from your lessons.’

Theodore’s mouth went dry as he received the summons, and his heart thumped as he trailed along the cloister to the abbot’s house. Did Father Peregrine know? He could not tell from the way Father Matthew had spoken. It was very possible that the novice master would mention his absence from Office and the midday meal, and then of course, Father Peregrine would have exposed his lie.

Reluctantly, Theo raised his hand and knocked at Peregrine’s door, which stood ajar. ‘Benedicite!’ called a cheerful voice from within, and Theodore entered and forced himself to look his abbot in the face.

‘Good day, Brother,’ said Peregrine with a friendly smile. ‘I expect Father Matthew told you, I have some illumination work I need done. It is only a text for Master Goodwin from the village. He wants it for his daughter as a present for her child’s baptism.’

Theodore stared at him, dizzy with relief. He didn’t know! By some miracle, Father Matthew had not asked him about yesterday. With luck he would never find out and Theo would be safe!

‘Yes, of course, Father,’ he said and walked to the scribe’s desk in the corner by the window, where parchment and inks, brushes and pens lay ready for him.

Father Peregrine stood by his own table, selecting a book from a pile that lay there.

‘What is the text, Father?’ asked Theodore.

‘The text?’ said Peregrine absently. ‘Oh, it’s from the Book of Proverbs, chapter twelve and verse twenty-two: Abominatio est Domino labia mendacia: qui autem fideliter agunt placent ei.’

‘The Lord detests lying lips,’ translated Theodore slowly, ‘but he delights in men who are truthful.’

He stood and looked at Father Peregrine, but he was busy with his pile of books, his back turned to him. Did he know? It was a very strange verse to choose for a child’s baptismal greeting. Theodore felt that familiar, horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. What now? Should he just write out the text and say nothing? Could he sit there all morning, carefully writing and illuminating such words, without owning up to his own lie?

Father Peregrine turned and looked at him enquiringly. ‘Is something the matter, Brother?’

Did he know? Theodore couldn’t tell. He loved this man, who had always treated him so gently and so courteously, and the thought of losing his respect was unbearable. To be clumsy and careless was bad enough in a monk, but to be a liar was despicable. But if he knew… if he knew and Theodore said nothing, he would be in even deeper disgrace than if he didn’t know and Theodore told him. And if he didn’t know, did not God know anyway? And what was the point in trying to please men, when you had done the thing God detested, and told a lie?

Slowly, Brother Theodore knelt. ‘Father, I… I told a lie,’ he said. ‘I fell asleep yesterday morning, and didn’t wake up until the midday Office was nearly over. I didn’t go into the chapel. I told Father Matthew…’ Theodore struggled to keep his voice firm as he spoke. To his shame, he felt a hot tear escape from his eye. Father Peregrine waited and said nothing. ‘I said you had kept me here doing some copying work for you,’ finished Theodore bleakly. ‘I’m sorry.’ He clenched his teeth and stiffened his face against the tears. He had not known how much the abbot’s friendship had fed his hungry soul until now he had lost it.

‘God forgives you, my son, and so do I,’ Father Peregrine said gently. ‘Come and sit down and tell me about this, Theo.’

When Theodore raised his eyes, he was greeted by a kindly smile. All his life he had been used to steeling himself against rebuke and censure, but the unaccustomed kindness was too much for him, and he buried his face in his hands and sobbed like a child. Father Peregrine sat down on the scribe’s stool beside him and waited for the storm to pass.

‘God forgive us, we must almost have broken him, poor lad,’ he thought as he looked on the bowed body, shaking in anguished weeping. He thought of St Benedict’s recommendation in the Rule, that the abbot should remember his own frailty and have a care not to break the bruised reed, or destroy the pot in his zeal to remove the rust. ‘The abbot in this monastery wouldn’t get a chance to break the bruised reed, if he wanted to,’ he thought. ‘Father Matthew’s in there before me, trampling on it in his tactless clogs. The scourge, indeed! Oh, poor lad, you have suffered. God help me now to find the right words and bring some healing there.’

Theodore, who never had his handkerchief, scrubbed at his eyes with his knuckles, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Father Peregrine gave him his own handkerchief, and Theodore blew his nose noisily, and raised his woebegone face to look at him.

Peregrine burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Brother, it’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘Get up off the floor, man, and tell me what’s been going on.’

Theodore told him everything. Simply, and without defending himself, he poured out his pain. He told him about the misery of his boyhood, his hope of a new life on entering the community, then the lateness and breakages and the slamming of doors, his inability to please Father Matthew. Hopelessly he explained how he had tried and struggled and failed, and finally his courage had failed him.

Peregrine listened without a word. Finally he said: ‘Father Matthew tells me you are careless and clumsy.’

‘He tells me it, too,’ said Theodore miserably, ‘and it’s true. I am.’

‘Brother Theodore, there is no one in this community with so fair a hand as yours or such a gift for illumination. I have never known you to mar your work or overlook a mistake. I know that if I ask you to produce a document for me, it will be legible, beautiful and accurate. I have never known you to be either clumsy or careless in your work. On the contrary, you make it beautiful with both artistry and conscientiousness.’

Theo gazed at the floor, dumb and embarrassed in his happiness. The words were like ointment on a wound. It had always been impressed upon him that work well done was no more than his duty, and though his work had always been in demand, it had never before been praised. Father Matthew felt that his soul was imperiled enough without giving him cause to be conceited.

‘Now then, get up off the floor, my friend, and get to work on this text. Perhaps Master Goodwin would prefer something a little less menacing. Try Psalm 103 verses thirteen and fourteen: ‘Quomodo miseratur pater filiorum, miseratus est Dominus, timentibus se. Quoniam ipse cognovit figmentum nostrum, recordatus est quoniem pulvis sumus.’

‘As a father has compassion on his children,’ said Theodore, ‘so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.’ He got to his feet, but then an unpleasant thought occurred to him. ‘Father, I suppose… should I tell Father Matthew about the lie I told, and confess it at community chapter?’

Father Peregrine sat looking up at him. His eyes were twinkling. ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘from all I hear, Father Matthew has been zealous enough at pruning your unfruitful branches for one week. You have confessed your sin. It is done with. Put it behind you and get on with your work.’

Brother Theodore made that text a work of art. Just at the end of it where it said, ‘He remembers that we are dust,’ he painted a little lark, emblem of the soul of man, rising up out of the dust in song.

Mother got up from her chair and carefully carried the sleeping Cecily to her bed. ‘Sleep well, little Goldenhair,’ she said softly, as she tucked her in.

‘I like Brother Theo,’ murmured Beth’s drowsy voice, ‘but not Brother Matthew. Brother Matthew is a baddy.’

‘Father Matthew,’ corrected Mother. ‘Father, because he was a priest. Don’t you like him, little mouse? He was a very good monk, though.’

‘He wasn’t kind. Christians should be kind.’

‘That’s right, my love. Perhaps he was trying too hard. Perhaps he was thinking so hard about being good that he forgot to think about being kind.’

‘Well, anyway, I don’t like him,’ said Beth conclusively.

‘That’s because you like the rascals! You like Brother Tom best, don’t you, because he was a mischief. Enough of that now, though. Snuggle down to sleep. Melissa, are you staying here or coming down for a while?’

‘I’ll come down,’ I decided.

‘Me too!’ said Beth.

‘Ssh, quiet, Beth, you’ll wake Mary and Cecily. No, darling, you must stay in bed now. Melissa is a big girl, it’s not her bed time quite, but she’ll be up soon. Night-night now. I’ll leave the door open, and you won’t feel lonely.’

Mother blew out the candle, and we went downstairs.