CHAPTER SEVEN

Too Many Cooks

Beth and Cecily and I used to get the most miserable colds as children; I can still remember the feeling. My nose would be blocked, all my sinuses throbbing painfully. The area under my nose would be sore with rubbing against my hanky; my lips would be cracked and dry from breathing through my mouth; my eyes would run and my head would feel as though it was full of porridge, thick and hot.

The season of colds, which ran all the way through to the end of February, started in November, when the magical, golden enchantment of autumn days (the wine of the seasons, when the year held its breath at the approach of frost and fire) turned into the raw damp of the back end of the year, clogging leaves packed underfoot and chilling fog pervading everything. If I had to draw a picture of November, I think I would draw an old man in a grey macintosh, blowing his nose. Even the smoky delights of fireworks and baked potatoes on bonfire night do no more than hold off the depression of those creeping fingers of darkness and cold.

I turned fifteen at the end of October and had no sooner celebrated my birthday than the first of November found me flushed with fever and thick with catarrh. I moped and sweated under a mound of blankets in our frosty bedroom for a day, and snuffled and dozed through a delirious night, then by the morning the fever had subsided, and I was left feeling weak and fractious with the thick-headed, mouth-breathing, runny-eyed misery of a streaming cold.

When the others had gone to school, Mother lit a fire for me to sit by and made a nest for me on the sofa. She gave me hot elderberry cordial to drink, and made me inhale steam from a great enamel jug of friar’s balsam dissolved in boiling water. I began to feel more cheerful, enjoying the luxury of being pampered and waited on, and I was looking forward to the afternoon, when Cecily, who had so far escaped my cold, was to go shopping with Grandma and I would have the precious treat of Mother’s company all to myself for a whole afternoon.

I think Mother was longing as much as I was for an afternoon without Cecily. I had been short-tempered and irritable all week, and Cecily was like a simmering volcano at the best of times. Feeling too unwell to summon the patience and consideration she needed, I had fallen out with her before breakfast. She was ready to pick a fight with anyone by lunchtime.

Mother’s patience was wearing thin too, but she managed to humour Cecily into eating her lunch, a thick vegetable soup with hot brown rolls and creamy butter that I could not taste. Then Mother swathed Cecily in her brightly-coloured scarf, gloves and hat, and buttoned her duffle coat on over the top, then stood her on a chair in the window to watch for Grandma. She stood very still, looking with great concentration at all the passers-by. ‘That’s not Grandma. That’s not Grandma. That’s not Grandma. Grandma!’

Grandma swept Cecily up into a big hug as she came in from the cold. ‘There’s my precious! Are you ready? Round the shops, then tea at Betty’s and back in time for bed. All right, Mummy?’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Mother with a smile. ‘’Bye ’bye Cecily. Have a lovely time. Here, you haven’t got your shoes on!’

‘And how are you, Melissa?’ asked Grandma, as Mother fastened on Cecily’s shoes. ‘Better for a day in bed I expect. I’ll pick you up some of my herbal linctus from the pharmacy. That’ll frighten any cold! See you later, then, ladies. Enjoy your afternoon.’

Mother waved goodbye to them from the door, then disappeared into the kitchen and returned five minutes later bearing a tray with two thick slices of fruit cake, a cup of coffee for herself, and some lemon and honey for me. She put another log on the fire and curled up in her armchair with her coffee cupped in her hands, looking into the flames.

‘Peace,’ she said happily. ‘Oh, this is nice. It’s nice when you feel peaceful inside, and you can curl up by the fire in a peaceful house. Too much racket in the house and it frays you at the edges a bit; but if you lose the peace on the inside of you, you could be in the quietest place on earth and your nerves would still jangle.’

I ate my fruit cake slowly. It is so difficult to eat when you have to breathe through your mouth. I felt quite exhausted by the time I’d finished. I drank the lemon and honey, and snuggled under my blanket on the mound of pillows Mother had provided.

‘Tell me a story about Father Peregrine, Mother,’ I said. She gazed into the fire, thinking, seeing, far away. Then she smiled.

‘I never told you Brother Cormac’s story, did I?’ she asked.

‘No!’ I said. ‘Tell me! He was one of the novices, wasn’t he?’

He entered at about the same time as Brother Theodore, two years after Father Peregrine was attacked and beaten by his father’s enemies. In those days, the novitiate lasted only a year before a monk was solemnly professed (nowadays it’s a matter of years). Brother Tom was a novice longer than most—he entered just over two years before Cormac, but was with him in the novitiate for six months, too. At the time of this story, Brother Tom and Brother Francis had just made their solemn profession, and Brother Theodore, Brother Thaddeus and Brother Cormac were left in the novitiate, along with a young man called Gerard Plumley, who had not yet made his first vows and been given his new name.

Brother Cormac was an Irishman, a long, thin streak of a lad, with a wild tangle of black hair, and eyes as blue as speedwell. He had been an orphan since he was a tiny child. His mother and father died together in the seas off the coast of England, when the ship in which they were crossing the Irish Sea was hit by stormy weather, and foundered on the rocks. A wreck always drew a crowd: some to loot, some to watch and some to save lives. Under the grim sky and against the squalls of wind and rain, men dared the savage sea and brought to shore as many of the dead and the exhausted survivors as they could find. They found Cormac, only a baby then, about Cecily’s age, clutching tightly to his drowned mother, terrified and half-drowned himself, and they left it to the gathering of women on the shore to separate the two.

They also saved from the wreck an Irish merchant who had made his home in York, and had been returning from a visit to his family in Ireland. The merchant recognised the scared waif, and was able to identify the child’s father among the dead. The fishermen and the other local folk had mouths enough to feed at home, and nobody knew what to do with the orphaned child. He had fought and scratched and bitten his rescuers as they prised him free from his mother’s body, but he sat quietly enough now, wrapped in a blanket on a bench in the inn which had opened its doors as a refuge.

The Irish merchant had no little ones of his own, and looking down at the blue eyes great with terror and shock in the child’s blanched face, he took pity on him, and being full of gratitude to God for his own deliverance from the wild sea, he took the orphan home for his wife to care for. This impulsive gesture of generosity they often regretted, for the black-haired, blue-eyed elf of a baby grew to be a wild, wayward, moody boy who brought them more headaches than joy.

When he was eighteen, the earliest the monks could take him, his jaded foster-parents steered him firmly in the direction of the cloister, feeling that they had done their fair share and more of giving houseroom to this difficult charge. They thought of the monastery, because one of his unreasonable habits was his flat refusal, since he was eight years old, to eat anything of flesh or fowl or fish or even eggs and milk. His distraught foster-mother had thought at first he would be ill without such wholesome food, but he proved healthier than all the rest of the household on his dried beans and vegetables; and besides, it was more trouble than it was worth to try to dissuade him. Early conversations had gone something like this:

‘Drink up your milk, my lad.’

‘It is not my milk. It is for the calf.’

‘Daisy the cow doesn’t mind you drinking a drop, my poppet.’

‘It is not true. You have taken her calf away. She cries for her calf.’

‘She’s only a beast, my pet. She won’t fret long. Drink up now.’

‘It is the calf’s milk. No.’

As he grew older, he would lecture his bewildered fos ter-parents fiercely about their exploitation of God’s innocent creatures. His foster-father would look down at the hunk of roast meat in his hand feeling a little queasy as the piercing blue eyes fixed him with an accus ing stare, and his adopted son held forth passionately on the freedom and grace of the running deer, the beauty and serenity of the mother bird in her nest. In the end, what with one thing and another, they’d had enough of him, and knowing that all the monks, except the sick brothers in the infirmary, abstained from eat ing the flesh of all four-footed creatures, they felt it a reasonable compromise to send him there.

He was willing, though not enthusiastic, and realising that the hospitality extended to his childhood need had now run out, he saw no alternative but to comply with their wishes and offer himself to serve and learn to love God, in return for his bed and board in God’s house. He was fairly horrified to discover that there he would eat what he was given and make no complaint, and he submitted to this repulsive discipline with a bad grace and a churning stomach. He did not make himself popular in his first months with the community. He was more than a little touchy and inclined to take himself seriously and bear a grudge when anyone offended him. In truth, he was more at peace with the animal kingdom than with mankind or with himself.

The one person he did take to was Father Peregrine— fortunately, since he was entering a life that would involve vowing himself to total obedience to the abbot of the community. When first he was brought to the abbot by his foster-parents, he looked at the lean, hawk’s face with its savage scar, the still, twisted hands, and he felt an unfamiliar stirring of compassion. Equally strange to him was the uneasy feeling of inadequacy that grew in him as the calm, shrewd eyes appraised him. Well used to condemning other men, he was surprised by the grudging but involuntary respect this maimed and gentle monk’s unassuming authority called forth in him. As time went on, the grudging respect developed into a fierce loyalty, and the incidents of the humble pie and Brother Thaddeus’ confession made their mark on him and won his affection. He was grateful, too, that Father Peregrine acknowledged his Irish origins in giving him the name Cormac.

Thus it was that Brother Cormac began to love, who had never loved; who had taken the tenderness that should have been for brother and sister and mother and father and given it instead to the birds and the beasts, because they could never be his kin, and could never hurt him by being lost to him. So he began, awkwardly, to unfold.

In his first weeks in the abbey, Brother Cormac had been put to work in the scriptorium, but his restless and discontented spirit was unsuited to the disciplined and painstaking work. After his naming and clothing he was moved to work in the kitchens, which proved equally disastrous.

He and Brother Andrew took an instant dislike to each other, and the sparks flew at every encounter. Brother Andrew provoked him by making sarcastic comments to him if his work was badly done, and Cormac, though he was not openly insolent, managed to convey his dislike and contempt for the old man in every look and gesture. Brother Andrew further goaded him by insisting on mispronouncing his name and calling him ‘Cormick’, a minor yet infuriating pinprick, but the kind of gibe that was Brother Andrew’s speciality.

‘Cormac,’ he would say, ‘my name is Cormac.’ But it didn’t do any good.

In the end, Father Matthew moved him and sent him to work in the gardens and in the infirmary with Brother Edward, in the hope that the contemplative outdoor work of gardening and the care of the aged and the sick would between them bring to life a little gentleness and peace of mind in him.

One of his tasks in the infirmary was to help Brother Edward with the daily task of working and massaging Father Peregrine’s stiff, crippled hands. Brother Edward thought those long, sensitive Irish fingers looked as if there could be skill in them if only they could be taught a little kindness. Besides this, Edward well knew the calming and tranquilising power that lay in aromatic oils, and he thought it would do Cormac good to work with them. As for Brother Cormac, he was only too relieved to be sent to work elsewhere than with Brother Andrew, and determined he would never cross the old man’s path or speak to him again if he could help it.

It was unfortunate for him that one day when it was his turn to serve at table, he knocked against Brother Andrew’s arm, entirely accidentally, while pouring ale for one of the brothers. He caused Brother Andrew to spill the spoonful of vegetable stew he was holding, and splash gravy onto his habit. Andrew growled an irritable comment under his breath at Brother Cormac, who muttered sourly back at him. Father Peregrine’s atten tion was caught by the exchange, and he saw the ill-tempered look that passed between them. He came later to find Brother Edward in the infirmary, and asked him: ‘Would you say Brother Cormac is unhappy?’

‘Unhappy?’ echoed Brother Edward. ‘Well I can’t say I’ve ever seen him smile. Mind you, he’s better since he’s been away from Brother Andrew. They came close to blows, those two.’

Father Peregrine looked at him thoughtfully. ‘And that is why Brother Cormac was moved away from the kitchens?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes. Brother Andrew is a contrary old devil at the best of times, but it was as tense as a thunderstorm with the two of them together.’

‘I didn’t know. I was under the impression that Father Matthew felt the garden and infirmary work would be beneficial to Brother Cormac.’

‘Well, that’s true, but it was a matter of urgency to get him away from Brother Andrew. The atmosphere between them was poisonous.’

‘He’ll have to go back to the kitchen, then,’ said Father Peregrine. ‘No, it’s no good, Brother,’ he insisted in response to Edward’s gesture of protest. ‘There’s no place in a monastic community for enmity and quarrelling. Somehow or other this must be resolved.’

He discussed the matter no further with Brother Edward, but went straight along to find Father Matthew. The day following, the novice master sent Brother Cormac back to the kitchen to work, and Gerard replaced him in the garden and the infirmary.

Cormac was to continue with only one of his former tasks in connection with the infirmary. As they were so busy at that time of year (it was a raw, damp October) with bronchial coughs and feverish colds, he was told to keep on his daily job of working with Edward on Father Peregrine’s hands, at least until the winter ailments had run their course. That this was mainly for his sake, to give him a restoring space in the midst of a difficult day, did not occur to him. He was merely appalled to find himself back in Brother Andrew’s company.

A picture of sullen resentment, Brother Cormac presented himself in the kitchen after the morning instruction in the novitiate, to be greeted by the sarcastic old cook’s ‘Good morning, Brother Cormick. Better late than never. Would you prepare that pile of chicken livers yonder for the potted meat?’

‘Cormac,’ the young man replied through clenched teeth and turned to his work. His gorge rose in disgust at the sight of a pile of chicken livers sufficient to feed thirty monks, and he seethed with rage and resentment that Brother Andrew should have designated this work to him. Grimly, he set to work, and a long job it was, too.

It was well on into the morning, as things were getting busy towards lunchtime, that Father Peregrine came into the kitchen. The working area was not very spacious, and the staff were hard put to fit round each other as it was, so it was with a frown of annoyance that Brother Andrew broke off from his work to attend to the interruption.

‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Brother Andrew,’ Father Peregrine began courteously.

‘I should think you are if you want your lunch on time,’ was the reply he got.

The abbot looked a little taken aback, but persevered. ‘Brother, I have come to beg a favour of you. You will probably know, it is difficult for me to maintain much movement in my hands, especially as I have no form of work for them in the course of my duties but a little writing. I wondered if I might come in here and work for a while each morning, so as to stretch them a little further?’

Brother Cormac looked up from the mangled pile of poultry offal. He was mildly surprised and puzzled. He knew—they all knew—that Father Peregrine hated to draw attention to the state of his hands. As he spoke now, his stiff formality sounded awkward and reluctant, as though he was wishing he could escape from Brother Andrew’s irritated glare. There was something odd about it. Cormac looked at Brother Andrew, to see how he would take the suggestion.

Brother Andrew was staring at Father Peregrine in exasperation. His kitchen was crowded, and he had enough already to plan and arrange, but a request from the abbot was an order, however politely phrased. He had no choice but to obey. He didn’t, however, have to be cheerful about it.

‘Father, this is my busiest time of day. I cannot stop for conversation now. If you think it would be helpful to you, then come, but you’ll have to keep yourself from under my feet. This kitchen is cramped enough already. I have no space for a lame man going to and fro. No doubt I could think of something to occupy you if you’ll keep to a corner out of the way; but come tomorrow early, not now, because I’m run off my feet already.’ And with this gracious speech, Brother Andrew turned back to his work and left Father Peregrine standing.

Cormac, watching, saw the muscle flex in Peregrine’s cheek, and saw the imperious flash in his eye, saw him draw breath to reply but then he set his lips firmly, bowed his head, turned and limped out of the kitchen without a word. Recognising in that flash of the eye a spirit as fiery as his own, Cormac’s proud heart paid unwilling tribute to a self-control he knew he could not match if he tried.

It was not that Brother Andrew was really unkind, just extraordinarily thoughtless, and not always able to make the distinction between plain speaking and plain rudeness. He did, at any rate, give careful thought to what tasks Father Peregrine could reasonably do in the kitchen, and took the trouble to discuss with him at some length the next morning just what he could and could not manage, ascertaining that although he could not cut anything very hard, like a turnip, or tough, like raw meat, and could not carry anything heavy unless he could hold it in his arm, he was able and willing to try any other tasks.

And try he did, humbly and largely unsuccessfully. Brother Andrew grew exasperated with him and did little to disguise the fact, annoyed as he was that this ridiculous whim of the abbot should have been visited on him.

Brother Michael, Brother Andrew’s gentle and friendly assistant, did his best to help Father Peregrine with those things that were clearly beyond him. He watched him one morning, struggling to remove the flesh from a poultry carcass for a game pie. It had taken him long enough just to roll and fasten back the wide sleeves of his habit in order to tackle the messy task. He was up to his elbows in grease and once nearly had the whole dishful off the table onto the floor. He stopped and closed his eyes, wearily rubbing his hand across his brow, thereby transferring poultry fat to his face as well as his hands. He sighed, set to work again, and Brother Michael came and stood by him quietly, helping him to finish the job.

‘Thank you, Brother,’ he said, but Michael caught the note of humiliation mingled with polite appreciation.

Father Peregrine did his best to minimise the hindrance he caused by his slow lameness in the busy kitchen, and mainly occupied himself with jobs that involved standing still, or sitting at a work bench, out of the bustle of activity. Even so, he did get in the way sometimes. Things were always at their worst at about eleven o’clock, when the kitchen staff were scurrying to get the main meal of the day to the table promptly after the midday Office of Sext.

On one such busy morning, Brother Andrew stood at one of the tables making a rich pastry: he was using eggs and butter, and the rare luxury of wheat flour, for a party of visitors who were staying in the guest house. He stood with the flour and diced fat in front of him, and the basin of eggs to one side at the edge of the table. He worked swiftly and deftly with one eye to the incompetent way Cormac was chopping herbs for the stew a few feet away from him.

‘Chop those finer, please, Brother Cormick,’ said the Scottish voice sharply. ‘You’re working in my kitchen now, not shovelling in the garden.’

Cormac looked up at him with undisguised loathing, and continued his work without replying. Out of the corner of his eye, Brother Andrew was aware of a pot boiling too fast over the fire, and seeing on a quick glance round that everyone was fully occupied except Father Peregrine, who had just returned from his task of sorting through the onions in the store-room, he said, ‘You might come and swing this pot off the fire for me, Father.’

Peregrine, hastening to be helpful, slipped on a little cube of butter that had fallen from the pastry-making as he passed Brother Andrew’s table. He shot out his hand instinctively to the table to save himself from falling, but lost his balance and fell anyway. His hand caught the basin of eggs that stood at the edge of the table, and he sat down with a jarring thump on the floor, hitting the side of his head with sickening force on the edge of the table, the spilt eggs dripping down his neck and arm. He flushed crimson at the hastily suppressed guffaw of laughter that broke out from the two village lads working across the room.

‘By all the saints!’ exploded Brother Andrew. ‘It’s worse than having a child around the place! Yes, thank you, Brother Michael, clear it up if you would. John, fetch me six more eggs from the basket, and be quick about it. I’m behind as it is.’

Brother Michael helped Peregrine to his feet and cleared up the spilt egg from the floor quickly and without fuss. Peregrine stood a moment, his head still ringing from the impact of the table, the slime of broken eggs oozing uncomfortably down his neck and sleeve. Nobody took the slightest notice of him.

‘I think I’d better go and find something clean to wear,’ he mumbled.

Brother Andrew looked up briefly from his pastry-making. ‘Aye, I should think you had, Father, you look like an egg nog.’

Peregrine bit his lip and limped to the door which led to the most direct path to the clothing room, where he could obtain a clean tunic and cowl from Brother Ambrose. It was a low, narrow door, opened by means of a small round knob, unlike the majority of the doors with their great cast-iron handles. He could not grasp the little knob properly, and he struggled to open the door and failed. He looked over his shoulder at the bustling kitchens he would have to cross to get to the other door, decided against it, and tried again, miserably, to turn the handle; without success. The cringing humiliation and despair of the early days of living with his disablement rose up in him again, and for a moment overwhelmed him. He stood helplessly, with his hand on the wretched little knob. He didn’t know what to do. Brother Michael, seeing his predicament, came instantly to help him, and opened the door. Peregrine glanced once quickly at him and limped out.

Looking up from his work, Cormac saw Brother Michael go to open the door and return to his task of seasoning and thickening the stew with distress on his face. Cormac came across to put his now extremely finely chopped herbs into it, and Michael said quietly to him, ‘Brother Andrew had almost reduced him to weeping. His mouth was trembling, Cormac. He had tears in his eyes.’

Cormac scowled. ‘Tears! It’s a punch on the nose the old scoundrel needs. Tears won’t move him!’ And he took himself off to the scullery to scrub pots violently on his own.

After that incident, the tension between Brother Cormac and Brother Andrew grew even worse. A storm was brewing. When Cormac came that afternoon to work on Father Peregrine’s hands, his jaw was set with anger, and he hardly knew what he was doing. Peregrine winced under his handling, but Cormac’s mind was on his own thoughts, and he did not see. As he left them to go to the novitiate chapter, Edward and Peregrine looked at each other expressively.

‘There goes a miserable, angry young man!’ said Brother Edward.

‘I know. There’s more tension in his hands than there is in mine,’ said Father Peregrine ruefully. ‘But let it be for now. This thing must be seen through somehow.’

It all exploded on the Thursday morning, three days later, about a month after Brother Cormac had come back to the kitchen and Father Peregrine had joined him there.

Peregrine was sitting at a table attempting to cut up a cooked beetroot with a vegetable knife. It was the middle of the morning, and Brother Cormac came in from his lessons in the novitiate.

‘You’re very late, Brother Cormick,’ said Brother Andrew.

‘Cormac. My lesson has only just finished,’ muttered Cormac. ‘What shall I do?’

‘Slice this ox tongue finely and put it on a platter for the infirmary,’ said Brother Andrew.

Cormac looked at the ox tongue and was nearly sick. His hand trembled as he worked, and he prayed silently, desperately, ‘O God, please don’t let me vomit. Help me. Please, please.’

An exasperated exclamation from the corner of the kitchen suddenly cut across his thoughts. Half of Father Peregrine’s beetroot had escaped him and rolled onto the floor. The other half lay in drunkenly cut slices on the table in front of him. The knife had slipped, and he had cut his finger. He addressed Brother Andrew humbly: ‘Brother, my hand is bleeding. I’m sorry to trouble you, but have you a rag I could bind it with?’

‘Aye. You’ll find some in the cupboard yonder,’ said Brother Andrew, ‘but pick up that beetroot off the floor, or you’ll be falling over that next.’

Peregrine obediently retrieved the fallen beetroot, and then limped across the kitchen, his finger in his mouth. Cormac, watching him, saw he had no hope of managing the cupboard door, the crutch and the rags, when blood ran down his finger every time he took it out of his mouth. He moved to help him.

Deep inside Brother Andrew knew it was mean, even though he was busy, to leave Father Peregrine to fend for himself. He was justifying it by telling himself that if Peregrine had come to learn to use his hands it was better to let him do so, when he saw Cormac go to help him. ‘And where do you think you’re going, Brother Cormick?’ he asked, acidly.

Cormac’s self-control finally snapped. ‘My name is Cormac!’ he bellowed, ‘and I was going to help him, which is more than you would, you ill-tempered, uncharitable, miserable, sour old troll!’ He said a lot more besides, which was even less polite, and Brother Andrew, bristling with fury, opened his mouth to reply.

Before he could do so, Father Peregrine spoke. ‘Brother Cormac, that will not do,’ he said firmly. ‘You will beg his pardon, please,’

Cormac stood, trembling with anger, glaring at Brother Andrew.

‘I said, my son, please beg his pardon.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Cormac muttered woodenly, still glaring, still trembling.

‘Brother Cormac, please look at me when I’m speaking to you,’ said Peregrine calmly. Cormac turned his head slowly to look at him, the blue eyes still icy with rage, hardly seeing him. ‘Please beg his pardon properly,’ said Peregrine.

‘I said, I’m sorry,’ ground out Cormac from between clenched teeth.

‘It comes better from you on your knees, my son,’ persisted Peregrine quietly.

The blue eyes blazed at him with their cold fire, and Cormac slowly shook his head. ‘Kneel?’ he said. ‘To him? No.’

Brother Andrew again drew breath to speak, quivering in his indignation. Father Peregrine stopped his interruption with a peremptory gesture, without looking at him. His gaze still held Cormac’s. ‘Son, do it,’ he said.

The moment of violent conflict that took place then in Cormac’s soul nearly wrenched it out of orbit. Anger and rebellion and disgust at the self-abasement required of him boiled inside; but yet he had not forgotten the self-control and ability to humble himself that he had seen in Peregrine, and he knew instinctively that that was the stronger thing, stronger than anger, stronger than hate, stronger than Brother Andrew. He had a sudden intuition that if he could not kneel before his ill-mannered old adversary, it was he who would have lost the battle, not Brother Andrew, not Father Peregrine. It was the moment he made up his mind, late, that he really did want to be a monk. He knelt. The kitchen was utterly still, watching in fascination.

‘I confess…’ he said, gratingly.

‘I think “humbly” is the word you’re looking for,’ said Father Peregrine quietly.

‘I… humbly… confess,’ said Cormac, shaking, dizzy with pent-up rage, ‘my… fault… of disrespect… and… rudeness. I ask God’s forgiveness and….’ He stopped, looking down at his hands, which were clenched into fists, the knuckles white. The saying of the next word seared him to the soul. He felt as though it cost him everything he had as he whispered, ‘… yours.’

He looked up, but it was Peregrine’s face he sought, not Andrew’s. He was rewarded by the admiration and respect that shone in his abbot’s eyes. Peregrine nodded at him, almost imperceptibly.

Brother Andrew cleared his throat, slightly shaken by the situation. There had been a moment when Cormac had looked almost mad, when Brother Andrew had realised he was more likely to get a black eye than an apology.

‘God forgives you, my brother, and so do I,’ he said as required, but the dry irony of his voice betrayed that it was the formula only, and his heart was not in it. So far as he could see, the rebellious and disobedient boy had been as defiant to his superior as he had been appallingly rude, and had had to be forced into submission to an extent that any other abbot would have had him whipped for. Only Father Peregrine, looking into those ice-blue eyes, had known quite well that neither he nor anyone would ever be able to make Cormac do anything: the lad’s battle was with himself, and he had won it, too.

‘Brother Cormac, I think it may be better if you go and help Brother Edward in the infirmary for the rest of the morning,’ said Father Peregrine, and Cormac stood up, nodded his assent and was gone. The quiet hum of activity began again as the kitchen staff hastily took up their work.

‘Brother Andrew, please will you come and see me one hour after the midday meal,’ Father Peregrine said pleasantly. ‘I’m sorry to have so delayed and hindered your work. I think I may have caused enough trouble for one morning. I’ll leave you in peace.’

It was not long before the bell would be ringing for Sext, and Peregrine made his way slowly to the chapel. There was a fine mist of rain, and the winds blew in fitful gusts, driving dead leaves into little drifts against the foot of the stone walls. Inside the chapel, the air was damp, and the light dim. On the wooden stalls, there lay a rime of moisture. Winter was closing in. Peregrine sat in his stall, feeling suddenly cold and weary. He looked down at his hand. His finger was smarting, and he cautiously unclamped his thumb from where he had held it against the cut. The bleeding had ceased, but it stung. He sucked it, looking sightlessly ahead of him, his thoughts drifting.

Cormac… Andrew… he smiled, shaking his head. What a pair! A letter that must be written after lunch. Better eat in his own house, because he must be back from the infirmary in time to see Brother Andrew an hour after the meal… Brother Andrew… Peregrine’s eyes focused on the great wooden crucifix that hung over the altar. ‘What would you do with him?’ he wondered. ‘I have to resolve this somehow, my Lord. Help me to make him see. Poor Cormac, I can hardly blame him losing his temper. I’ve had to bite my own lip a time or two these past weeks. Dear Lord, he was angry. I thought he’d not obey me. Thought I’d pushed him too far. Brave lad. Brave, and very hard work. Help me to treat him right.’ He gazed at the crucified Christ, the bowed head, the hands splayed back against the cross, pinned with great, cruel nails, and he shuddered. ‘My God, what a price! Follow you? The thought makes me sick. Lead me, then, lead me. I haven’t got what it takes to walk that path on my own.’

The bell began to ring for Sext, and the brothers were coming in silently to their places, their faces shadowed by their cowls, their sandalled feet whispering on the stone floor. ‘Chad… Ambrose… Fidelis… Theodore—Theodore! He’s in good time, well done, lad… John, Peter, Thomas, Edward, Cormac, Mark, Francis, Cyprian, Gilbert, Clement (must have a word with him about that new manuscript), Stephen, Martin, Paulinus—he’s limping badly; his poor old knees are stiff and swollen in this weather. Matthew, Giles, Walafrid, Thaddeus, young Gerard, shaping up nicely, I think there is a vocation there, Dominic… Denis and Prudentius both laid up with a racking cough, and Lucanus won’t stir from the infirmary again now, dear old soul. No Andrew, no Michael, that’s my fault, causing a commotion in the kitchens just before the meal. No one else late or absent, old Brother Basil slipping into his place, back from ringing the bell.’

‘Deus in adjutorium meum intende,’ rang out the cantor’s chant.

Abbot Peregrine gave his mind to the Office.

Brother Cormac presented himself at the infirmary as instructed, and sought out Brother Edward, who was checking his supplies of medicine. ‘Good morning, Brother, what brings you here? Remind me to ask Brother Walafrid for some more of his soothing brew for poor old Brother Denis. He’s coughing fit to break himself apart.’

‘Father Abbot sent me,’ said Cormac cagily.

Brother Edward glanced at him sideways. ‘Did he? Why ever did he do that?’ he enquired innocently.

In spite of himself, Cormac was amused. For the first time ever that Brother Edward could recall, a brief flicker of a smile lit his face. Almost instantly, it clouded over again.

‘I quarrelled with Brother Andrew,’ he said. ‘Father Peregrine cut his hand, and Brother Andrew wouldn’t let me help him get a rag to bandage it. I lost my temper with him.’

Brother Edward turned to look fully at Cormac. He regarded him silently for a moment before he replied. Then, ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘day by day you tend that man’s hands with me. Have you not eyes to see the state of them? They are blistered with burns and sore with scalds and little cuts, and bruised too from those kitchen tasks he simply cannot manage.’

‘Well, I know,’ replied Cormac, ‘but he said he needs to use them to keep them moving freely. I suppose he’ll manage better in time.’

Brother Cormac was taken aback by the sudden flash of anger on Edward’s kindly face. Edward stood, contemplating him, until Cormac began to feel uncomfortable.

‘He would not wish me to say this,’ said Edward slowly, at last, ‘but somebody needs to tell you. He’s not working in the kitchen for the sake of his hands. The damage done to those hands can’t be put right by work; they’re beyond repairing. Believe me, I know they are; it was I who struggled to save them when they were smashed and broken and bleeding; and every day as I do what I can to ease the discomfort in them, it breaks my heart that I had not the skill to do a better job. No, he came because he saw you and Brother Andrew had bad feeling between you and he wanted you to sort it out; but between your sulks and Andrew’s ill humour he knew there would be trouble, and he thought he should be there to keep an eye on things. What else could he do? Stand in the corner, arms folded, tapping his foot, watching you sternly?’

Cormac looked at him, appalled. ‘Are you saying,’ he asked, horrified, ‘that he doesn’t need to be there for himself at all? That he came only for Brother Andrew and me?’

‘That’s about it, young man. You maybe thought, did you, that the abbot of a monastery has nothing better to do with his time than while away the morning in the kitchen, hindering the meal preparation?’ Cormac just gazed at him, dumbly. ‘Oh, but hark at me,’ said Brother Edward repentantly, ‘I sound as scathing as Brother Andrew, now; and there goes the bell for Sext and these chores not half finished. Never mind, lad. Come, let’s go to chapel.’

The midday meal over, Father Peregrine came to the infirmary as usual, and Brother Cormac and Brother Edward sat in silence to work on his hands. Cormac took the right hand and Edward took the left. Brother Cormac looked attentively at that hand for the first time. Until now, he had been too full of his own problems to see properly beyond them. The cut from the morning, which never had been bandaged, was still open a little, and grubby, and getting slightly inflamed. It was on the side of the first joint of the second finger.

‘That looks painful,’ said Cormac.

‘I had to write a letter,’ replied Father Peregrine. ‘The pen just catches it and makes it a bit sore.’

Cormac looked at him. ‘He did it for me,’ he thought.

‘It’s on your right hand,’ he said. ‘How did you come to cut your right hand?’

‘My right hand was getting a cramp trying to hold the knife, so I thought I’d try if I could do it better with the left. I learned to my cost that they may neither of them work, but I’m still a very right-handed man!’

Cormac straightened the fingers gently and examined the little burns, cuts and sore places. ‘For me,’ he thought, ‘and not only that, but the sharp orders that made him look clumsy and foolish and in the way.’ He remembered Brother Andrew’s irritation: ‘It’s worse than having a child around the place!’ and Brother Michael’s distress: ‘He had tears in his eyes.’

Cormac said nothing, but he gently salved the sore places, carefully disinfected and bandaged the cut, then worked over the whole hand as he’d been shown. This time he was seeing with his fingers, as Brother Edward had tried to teach him to do, finding the places where muscles were cramped and knotted, easing them out. When he had finished, he got to his feet and turned away without looking at Peregrine’s face, and made himself busy putting away oils and salves and lint.

‘Thank you,’ said Father Peregrine quietly. ‘Thank you for your healing love.’

Cormac looked at him a moment, then shook his head. Then, ‘I’ll be wanted back in the kitchen,’ he said, and he left them.

‘Whatever happened to him?’ said Father Peregrine. ‘Where on earth has this gentleness come from? Brother Edward, you’ve had a hand in this, I suspect.’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Edward. ‘I think it was more likely your hands.’

‘Well, whatever it was, thank God for it. I couldn’t have stood too many more mornings like this one. Now then, I must go and find Brother Andrew. Thank you for your care, Brother.’

He found Brother Andrew waiting for him in the abbot’s house, ill at ease out of his own domain, looking older and less autocratic away from his little kingdom in the kitchen.

‘Sit down, Brother, that’s right. I’ll come straight to the point. I know you have work to do, and so do I. This concerns Brother Cormac, as I expect you realise. To be blunt, Brother, you have treated him abominably. Your insensitivity and unimaginative dealing with him is shameful. I have never heard a monk speak with less courtesy and more rudeness than you do. You deliberately provoke him by miscalling his name, and that is inexcusable. Also, it is thoughtless and unkind to ask him to prepare meat unless it is absolutely necessary. You know well what a revolting task it is to him. Well? What have you to say?’

Brother Andrew sat rigidly still, looking down, mortified. Away from the pressure of work in the kitchen, away from the aggravation of Cormac’s hostility and unwillingness, he saw his own behaviour in a different light.

‘I have nothing to say,’ he mumbled. ‘What can I say?’

‘You will confess your fault at chapter in the morning. From now on, this has to stop. If you cannot find it in your heart to love, you can at least keep a civil tongue in your head. Have you understood me?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Thank you. You can go.’

Brother Andrew forced himself to look at Peregrine and was startled to see nothing but gentleness and concern in the eyes that looked back at him, where he had expected cold rebuke.

‘I’m sorry, Father,’ he said humbly. ‘Truly I didn’t think about the meat, but for the rest, it’s true what you say, I admit it. I’ll try to mend my ways.’

Father Peregrine nodded and watched the old man with affection as he went on his way. ‘He wants to mend his ways, Lord,’ he prayed silently as Brother Andrew closed the door. ‘He’ll need your help, then. That the habits of a lifetime were so easily undone! But you can’t help loving the peppery old codger. O Christ, be the bridge between them, stubborn men both and proud. It was a privilege to feel Cormac’s gentleness, but if you could divert a crumb, just a crumb of it from me to Andrew, it would make life so much easier.’ He sighed. ‘And who am I, that I should be asking you of all people for an easy life? As you think best then Lord, but only, give me patience when my own runs out….’

Brother Cormac had gone from the infirmary to the kitchen, which was empty now in the quiet time after the meal. He sat on a stool by a work bench, thinking, for a long while. Hearing the door open, he looked up, and seeing Brother Andrew, stiffened at once against anticipated sarcasm and hostility.

‘Brother Cormac, I was looking for you,’ Andrew said. ‘Father Abbot has just been speaking to me. Scolding me, really. He says I’ve treated you rudely and insensitively. He rebuked me for miscalling your name. Brother, I’m sorry. I truly didn’t think when I asked you to cut up that ox tongue. I’m sorry about your name, Brother Cormac, and for all my rudeness, I am sorry.’

Cormac was stunned. He sat and looked at him for a moment, an anxious, contrite old man, unsure of his reception, not an ogre, not to be despised. He jumped off his stool and flung his arms impulsively around his enemy. It is hard to say which of them was more amazed by his action, ‘Me too,’ Cormac said as he hugged him, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘For pity’s sake, Brother,’ flustered Andrew, disentangling himself, ‘calm yourself! Sit you down, for heaven’s sake, you wild, unpredictable, Irish whirlwind. What’s all this?’

He listened soberly as Cormac recounted what Edward had told him. ‘You mean he came here, not for himself, but for us? Oh, Brother, I was never more ashamed of myself in my life. Whatever should we do?’

Cormac looked at him shyly. ‘Make our peace?’ he suggested, with a small grin, the second in one day.

From that day onwards, Brother Andrew and Brother Cormac were friends, and there grew between them a bond of affection and understanding which transformed the two touchy, hot-tempered, and—underneath it—lonely characters. Not that they were always polite to each other.

Father Peregrine was passing the kitchen six weeks later, at the busy time just before lunch. Brother Cormac was strolling down the corridor ahead of him, late for work, and entered the kitchen as Peregrine passed.

‘Where the devil have you been, you good-for-nothing Irish rascal?’ roared an indignant voice.

‘I came the pretty way,’ came the nonchalant reply.

Father Peregrine smiled and shook his head as he continued on his way.

Mother leaned forward on her chair and prodded the fire with the long brass poker. A shower of sparks flew up and the soft white ash fell in the grate. She put another log on. Gingerly, I blew my sore, hot nose.

‘He always seemed to hurt himself, Mother.’

‘Yes, I know what you mean, my love,’ she said reflectively. ‘I think there were two reasons for that. One was simply that a man with broken hands can’t protect himself, or manage tools and things as well as we can. But also, it was because he wanted so much to be like Jesus, he wasn’t afraid to put himself in the place where he was vulnerable to hurt.

‘Oh, Melissa! Look at the time! There’ll be nothing for tea if I don’t get cracking! I shall have to go and meet Mary and Beth in half an hour, and they’ll all be famished in this cold weather!’ And she leapt to her feet and disappeared into the kitchen.