CHAPTER FIVE

Beholding the Heart

‘Tell me a story, Mother,’ I said one Sunday afternoon. We had been doing a jigsaw puzzle while the rest of the family were out walking the dog on the hill after lunch. ‘Tell me a story about Father Peregrine.’

But the telephone rang just then, so I went into the kitchen to answer it. It was my friend Helen, wanting to know about our geography homework, what it was and whether it had to be in on Monday or Tuesday. While I was talking to her, there was a knock at the front door. I heard Mother opening it and saying, ‘Hello, Elaine! This is a surprise. Come in.’

My heart sank, because I knew once Elaine got going she would probably talk for ages and ages. After I had finished my conversation and put the phone down, I went and popped my head round the door.

‘Shall I make coffee, Mother?’

Mother nodded, but didn’t speak, because Elaine was talking already. So I made three mugs of coffee and took them in. I thought that if I was there too she might go a bit sooner.

Elaine looked a bit pink-eyed and sniffy, as though she’d been crying. She was telling Mother that she had decided to leave our church.

‘I didn’t want to go without saying a word to anyone,’ she said. ‘Keith and I have prayed and prayed about this. Every time we open our Bible, it falls open at the book of Jeremiah, about how the people of God are deceived and idolatrous. I think God is trying to tell us something about our church.’

‘Maybe…’ said Mother cautiously. ‘Of course, the book of Jeremiah is very near the middle of the Bible. It probably would keep coming open near there.’

Elaine shook her head sorrowfully. ‘I wish I could think it was only that, but this morning in my Bible notes, the reading was from Jeremiah. It said, “Of all the wise men among the nations, in all their kingdoms, there is no one else like you. They are senseless and stupid, and they are taught by worthless idols.” I don’t think I can ignore it any longer. God’s word to us is so powerful and clear. Keith and I have been longing—you know we have—for months and months for our church to move on with God, and it just isn’t. The Holy Spirit isn’t there. It’s so dead. We have to face the fact that God has moved on and left us behind, and Keith and I want to move on with him. So we’re going to start worshipping at Hill Street Baptist Church. We’ve been there a few Sundays, and the Holy Spirit is really moving there.’

Mother sipped her coffee. ‘Do you really think God has left our church, Elaine?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think he was ever there. Just look at it! Father Bennett’s so awful and Father Carnforth’s so old. We never sing anything but dirging hymns. We should be dancing and singing and raising our hands to God in praise. The Bible says we should.’

‘Well, why don’t you then?’

‘Oh, don’t be silly. You just can’t. It’s so inhibiting, so dead. You understand really, I know you do.’

‘In a way, yes. I do like hymns though, and I can’t see why Father Carnforth being old means that our church is dead, but I can see that Hill Street would suit you and Keith better.’

‘It isn’t a question of what we want for ourselves. If it was only us, of course we’d stay. It’s what God wants that counts. It’s been such a hard decision for us.’ Elaine’s nose went very red, and her eyes filled with tears. She blew her nose, and carried on, ‘I haven’t been able to sleep a single night this week, but God is moving on and he won’t wait forever. Either you move with him, or you get left behind, and our church just isn’t moving with him.’

Mother looked a bit sceptical, but she didn’t say anything. She drank some more of her coffee.

‘I’ve been thinking about what Jesus said to his disciples,’ Elaine went on. ‘He said that if anyone would not listen to their words, they must shake the dust off their feet and move on. Keith and I have been to Father Bennett and challenged him about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and he was very rude to us.’

‘You talked to Father Bennett about baptism in the Holy Spirit?’ said Mother. ‘My hat! What on earth did he say?’

‘He just dismissed it. He said it was all a fad. He said all Christians had the Holy Spirit or they wouldn’t be Christians.’

‘Well, you have to admit, there is something in that,’ said Mother.

‘In a way, but you know there’s more to it than that. It was you who first taught me about the Holy Spirit. So anyway, Keith and I have challenged him, and he has been confronted with God’s word and rejected it. So we’re shaking the dust from our feet and moving on with God.’

Elaine went quite soon after that. She didn’t stay as long as usual. As she was leaving, the rest of the family came home, and then it was teatime and after tea Mother went to church.

At bedtime I went up and sat with her as she put the little ones to bed. I sat on the floor, watching the candle flame as it moved in the slight draught.

‘Is it true what Elaine said, Mother?’ I asked, once the little ones were settled down in bed.

‘About what?’

‘That God moves on, and won’t wait for us. If we can’t keep up with him, he’ll leave us behind.’

‘No. It’s not true.’

‘How do you know?’ I needed to be sure. I felt a bit afraid at the idea that I had to keep up with God.

‘I know because… well, if God moves on like that, who is it that picks me up when I stumble and fall? Someone does, and it feels a lot like Jesus. What about the story you wanted, Melissa? Shall I tell it to you now?’

‘In a minute,’ I said slowly. ‘With the Bible… it is God’s word, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Mother replied firmly.

‘Well then, Elaine might be right, mightn’t she? Jesus did say that thing about dust.’

‘He said it, yes, but he said a lot of other things too that Elaine might more usefully take note of. A funny thing happens with the Bible, Melissa. It acts a bit like a mirror. People who come to it resentful and critical find it full of curses and condemnation. People who come to it gentle and humble find it full of love and mercy. The truth of God is not a truth like “cows have four legs” is true. God’s truth is him, himself. There are no short cuts. You have to get to know him. If you try to use the Bible like a fortune-telling game, it just bounces your own ideas back at you. God won’t let us use him like that. It’s all right, Melissa. He understands our weaknesses and our mistakes. He does love us. He’ll wait for us to catch up—even Father Bennett. He’s not going to dump us like that.’

I sighed. ‘Tell me the story. Whose story is it?’

‘There’s a bit of everyone in this one. Brother Theodore and Father Peregrine and Father Matthew mostly.’

‘I like Brother Theo. Go on then.’

I lay down on the floor with my head on Beth’s mattress, watching the candle flame as Mother began her story.

People have different ways of protecting themselves. Brother Francis had chosen to protect his vulnerability with a smile. Brother Cormac was like a hedgehog, making his soft belly invisible and exposing to the threatening world a back full of spikes. Both those ways are quite good ways of protecting yourself. They help you to cope when life’s upsets seem more than you can face. But to protect yourself like that has a few drawbacks when the soft, vulnerable part of you has a wound. The hedgehog is wise to bristle against attack, but if his soft belly is wounded, sooner or later he needs to uncurl and let someone salve it, dress it, heal it. The one who, like Francis, hides his vulnerability with a shield, a mask, a smile, is protected more or less from wounding, but not of course from the wounds behind the shield—the wounds he already has. Sooner or later he has to lower the shield, to let the physician see and touch the sore place, if he wants it to be cleaned and bound up and soothed.

Father Peregrine’s defence was his dignity of office—there was a certain refuge in being the competent, authoritative abbot of his community—but he too, for his soul’s health, and for the sake of truth, needed from time to time to allow someone to see him, know him in his weakness and his human reality. There are, though, some people who—for whatever reason—cannot seem to protect themselves successfully, and Brother Theodore was one of those. He grew up through a miserable childhood in a home where he was a misfit, beaten and disliked; and he never found an adequate way of protecting himself. Francis had his smile, Cormac had his fierce bad temper, Peregrine had his aristocratic authority. Theodore had only his clumsiness. It was as though misery had numbed him. When a man’s fingers are numb with cold or illness, he drops things, blunders, becomes butter-fingered—and that was Brother Theodore. Father Peregrine had found and touched and gently bandaged the wound behind the clumsiness; but of course we are what we are, and not even Father Peregrine could wave a magic wand for Brother Theo and change him instantly. For those like Brother Francis and Brother Cormac, once someone has been let near the hurting place, and allowed to touch it and help the pain, then their ways of protecting themselves against more hurt are quite useful.

But poor Theo and his disastrous clumsiness drew rebuke and trouble constantly, adding humiliation to pain, and insult to injury. Because, of course, his soul was not numb or impervious to hurt. He came perilously near to giving up on life, sinking into defeat, existing utterly without hope. Worst of all, in that most ugly face of despair, the despair of receiving love and affirmation, the little green plant of tenderness inside him all but withered and died, so that he could no longer give love. The wound almost cut too deep, and cut off life.

He was saved from this final despair by the joy of his work as a scribe and a musician, in which creativity his artist’s soul flew free and rejoiced; and also by the understanding of his abbot, who kept him going. Father Peregrine patched up the cuts and bruises Theo’s soul endlessly sustained, comforted his confused misery, delighted in his artistry, beheld his grief. It was a wonderful thing to Brother Theodore, that beholding. In his private meditations he would read the words of Psalm 139: ‘Domine probasti me, et cognovisti me—Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me,’ and he would kneel down in the solitude of his cell whispering his prayer. ‘Look at me, oh, look at me! Look at my sin, my failure, my stupidity. Oh, look at me and heal me.’ And it was as he allowed his secret grief and shame to be looked at, touched and beheld by his abbot, that he was healed. It was not anything Father Peregrine did or said that healed Theodore so much as knowing that the abbot, whose body bore the scars of his own suffering, really did behold his grief. That somehow made it bearable.

For the period of his novitiate in the community, Brother Theodore and Father Matthew, the novice master, were each other’s cross to bear. Father Matthew, that upright, stern, deeply religious pillar of monasticism was determined, though it cost him everything, to train Brother Theodore into an admirable figure of recollected piety. Brother Theodore, so far as Father Matthew was concerned, went from the novitiate into full profession as one of his failures. The mere sight of Brother Theodore was enough to pucker Father Matthew’s austere brow into an unconscious frown of irritation. The encounter was indeed a costly one, but Father Peregrine knew what his novice master never understood: that it was Brother Theodore, not Father Matthew, who paid the price.

The abbot was, of course, a man of his time, and whereas a modern superior might have found someone kinder than Father Matthew to be the master of novices in his community, Father Peregrine accepted the severity of Father Matthew’s régime as an important, if sometimes excessive, discipline. He contented himself with tempering its effects with his own mercy. He also suspected that much of Father Matthew’s unyielding spirituality was made more of plaster than of rock, and to humiliate him by depriving him of his post might bring the noble edifice of his assurance to dust.

This particular day, when Brother Theodore was nearly, but not quite, through the tunnel of his novitiate year, had seen a good morning so far for both Brother Theo and Father Matthew.

The novice master had spent the greater part of the morning in the parlour with a family: mother, father and their son, who meant to try the life at St Alcuin’s. They had come humbly for Father Matthew’s guidance and counsel, which they received with a reverence and respect that was the more gratifying because they were of a lineage and descent that would have put them as far above Father Matthew’s social aspirations as the sun in the sky, had he remained in the world as the fourth son of a struggling merchant. So St Alcuin’s master of novices was feeling well-disposed towards all men as he emerged into the courtyard with his little party of visitors. Their talk had gone well. The lad was full of the wild hopes and ideals proper to a nineteen-year-old heart, and Father Matthew had smiled benignly on his avowal of vocation. He had smiled on the lad’s parents too, for their coffers were lined with as much gold as silver, and more estates than any man could reasonably require. The abbey stood to receive a fair gift at their hands if their youngest son chose to make his soul as a monk in its cloisters. Even Father Matthew, whose vision was set unwaveringly upon heaven, could not help but notice these material benefits out of the corner of his eye, and feel a modest glow of satisfaction that their meeting had run so favourably.

He came into the courtyard with the three of them, and together they made a striking group indeed. Father Matthew’s erect and ascetic dignity was enhanced rather than eclipsed by the fashionable elegance of his wealthy guests. Yes, things had gone well, and the small frisson of exultation he permitted himself was only diminished, not utterly extinguished, by the sight of Brother Theodore approaching, one sandal flapping awkwardly on a broken strap, the hem of his habit trailing and a smudge of livid green ink on his left cheek. Theodore was bearing in his hands a jug of beer from the kitchen, which was one of the ingredients of the ink he was mixing for his new project in the scriptorium (‘Beer?’ Cormac had said in the kitchen. ‘Theodore, this had better be true.’) which was just now absorbing him heart and soul.

He had one morning last week been summoned to the abbot’s house, and found Father Peregrine seated at his table with a book lying before him in a little clearing amid the landscape of manuscripts and letters that cluttered his table. The abbot had greeted him with friendly courtesy, and then after a fractional hesitation, a split second of indecision, had taken the book between his hands. ‘Brother, I would like you to look at this. It is a book of Hours that has not been completed. Do you think you can finish it for me?’

Brother Theodore heard the slight diffidence, almost shyness, and realised this was something special. He took the book and opened it. It was indeed something special. It was three-quarters completed, with fine and graceful lettering, and illuminations of subtle beauty, paintings of flowers and birds, of mythical beasts and intricate designs; a courtly dance of colour, balanced and harmonious, yet of uninhibited and arresting vitality. There were touches of gold shining on its pages, but used with restraint. This was not a vulgar riot of scarlet and gilt, but a sophisticated marriage of colours, and it was wanting a few pages still. As he turned over the parchments, which lay loose in a stack, unbound as yet because unfinished, he found there were two or three blank at the end, and one or two with the design sketched out, but not lettered or painted. There was one half-finished page with the lettering complete and the capital, but the margin half-done, started with the soft blue that was the theme colour for the page, but interrupted.

‘Father, this is a beautiful thing’, said Theodore, holding it in his hands, handling it with the curious mixture of confidence and reverence which denotes the true artist. ‘It is… it is… I’ve rarely seen one so lovely as this. Indeed I would be honoured to complete it if you think I can, but where have you come by it?’

Father Peregrine had been watching Theodore closely as he examined the book, but now he looked down at the table, unnecessarily moving his pens, the ink, the seal.

‘I had thought to continue it on the next Tuesday,’ he said, looking up abruptly, his voice studiedly light. ‘I had begun the painting of that last page on the Wednesday, then left it, with reluctance I confess, because the claims of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Eve and Easter Day left me with no leisure for anything. Then on the Monday night, they destroyed my hands. I put it away at the bottom of the chest over there, and it has stayed there this long time. Brother, will you be my hands? Will you finish it for me?’

Brother Theodore laid the little book on top of a pile of manuscripts on the table and turned over the leaves until he came to the half-painted one. He took it into his hands and studied it carefully.

‘You think I can do justice to this?’ he asked. ‘If I had made a thing of such beauty as this, it would be no small sacrifice to turn it over to another man to finish.’

‘These long months I have locked it away,’ Peregrine said. ‘It begins to look a little as though I thought it my own private property, which it is not. It is the community’s, not mine to sit on like a dragon guarding its hoard. Of course you can do it justice. Your work is equal to mine. Besides, even if you could not, what of it? It is only a book.’

Brother Theodore had need to put a brave face on too much heartache in his own life to be fooled by this. He put the parchment back carefully among the others.

He cleared his throat. ‘In the eighth Psalm,’ he said, speaking in rather a hurry, his ears a bit red, embarrassed at seeming to preach to his superior, ‘it says that God has put all he had made, all the works of his hands, into our care. I have often wondered what God felt—feels—when the beauty he has made and given us on trust is indifferently regarded; when men trap the singing lark and cut out her tongue for a dainty meal; when we beat little children with belts and sticks and let them creep hungry to bed to nurse their bruises; when we smoke out the bees and destroy them to rob them of their honey. God must have his head in his hands and weep sometimes, I think, in the heartbreak of our negligent misuse of his artistry, the work of his fingers. You understand what I’m saying to you? He knows, and I know, how you feel about this, even if no one else would. Can I take all of this away, not just the pages waiting to be done, so I can study how you’ve gone about it? Then I can do my best to make the whole thing a unity. Will you also write down for me the recipe for this blue ink, and I will try to mix some like it.’

Father Peregrine took a scrap of parchment from a little pile of torn remnants he used for jottings, and wrote down the proportions of the blue mixture. Theodore watched the toiling progress of the pen as the abbot formed the crabbed, unsteady letters. It was a laborious business: time and again the pen slipped in his crippled grasp, but the result was legible. He gave the slip to Theodore.

‘Can you read my staggering script?’

‘I can read it.’ Theodore paused, then gathered his courage to say, ‘To be your hands, that is a humbling thought, for your hands have more skill than you know. They have erased a lot of the black and ugly scenes from my heart and painted some fairer, brighter colours. Father, I will do what I can.’

So Brother Theodore had spent the week studying the little book, getting the feeling for its design, planning and preparing the last pages, practising lettering in the style Peregrine had used, and now he was ready to mix his inks and begin to paint the remainder of the half-finished page. It was to be a work of love, and the trust given him he hugged like a treasure to his heart—‘Brother, will you be my hands?’

As he walked along carrying the jug of beer to make his ink, his mind was filled with the vision of the page as it would be when it was done. The soft blue; blue of the Virgin’s cloak, blue of the morning, blue of the woods in spring, of a child’s eyes, of the harebells nodding in the summer fields… blue of all things gentle and beautiful and… Theodore looked up and saw for the first time the little knot of gentry standing in front of him. He was suddenly uneasily aware of Father Matthew’s eyes upon him in the sort of mild disapproval that Brother Theodore knew from experience could be kindled into wrath as easily as dry grass in the drought of summer can be set ablaze. He felt the familiar flutter of panic at the base of his throat, the clutch of apprehension in the pit of his stomach, the tightening of his chest.

It was at that moment that Father Peregrine came limping out into the courtyard to find Father Matthew, and to extend his own greeting to the guests. He saw the family standing there making their farewells. He saw Theodore pause, then nervously approach with his head bent in an attempt to render himself invisible as he passed them on his way to the day stairs leading up to the scriptorium. He saw the expression on Father Matthew’s face as Theodore stumbled over his broken sandal strap, shot out his hand to save himself, and dropped the jug he was carrying. It was smashed into tinkling fragments on the stone, in a puddle of warm fizzing beer that splashed my lady’s elegant gown and my lord’s embroidered shoes. There was a moment in which the universe stopped to allow for Brother Theodore’s mind to reel in dismay, Father Matthew’s expression to change from mere resentment to red-hot rage, and my lady to step back with a little, affected ‘Oh!’ of alarm.

Theodore, speechless, went down on his knees in haste, gathering up the pottery fragments, dropping them again, cutting his finger on the broken shards. Father Matthew, his lips tight with fury, drew himself up to his full height and towered over the offensive wretch grovelling in the beer at his feet. Then Theodore’s soul shrivelled under the excoriating shower of rebuke that the novice master released upon his head—his clumsiness, his discourtesy, the order and dignity of the abbey: it went on and on.

Smiling at the familiar scene (had he not often an occasion to bawl out his own serfs?) my lord took his lady’s hand that she might step across the pool of beer, and the family moved discreetly away to allow Father Matthew to finish his scolding.

Theodore crouched on the floor, his hands filled with broken bits of pot and dripping with blood and beer.

Father Peregrine, when his novice master paused for breath, said quietly, ‘Go gently, Matthew—he’s shaking. There now, you neglect your guests. Leave him to me.’

After one last scalding reprimand, Father Matthew consented to rejoin, with a profusion of apologies, his guests thus abused by the clumsy foolery of his novice. They dismissed his apologies with gracious good humour as they moved away towards the gatehouse buildings across the abbey court. None of them looked back, except the boy. He glanced over his shoulder to see the abbot stooping down, trying with his twisted and awkward hands to pick up the last fragments of sticky pottery, and the young monk on his knees remonstrating with the abbot, dropping what he held already in his attempt to gather up what he had missed.

With an amused smile, the lad turned away and followed his parents into the gatehouse.

Father Peregrine pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket. ‘Here, Brother, you have hurt yourself. Put that pile of pieces there to this side. Go and wash the cut on your hand and then you can find something to gather these up in. There now, don’t distress yourself, it couldn’t be helped. Swill away this spilled ale and there will be nothing left to remind Father Matthew of the offence.’

In mute distress, Brother Theodore did as he was bidden, and Peregrine went after Father Matthew and his guests to offer them the courtesy of an abbatial greeting.

When Theodore had disposed of the broken pot, and collected a broom and a pail of water, he returned to find Father Matthew standing there, balefully surveying the scene of Theo’s disgrace.

‘You will confess your fault of rude clumsiness at Chapter in the morning, Brother. I trust you are planning to wash this mess away. Have a care to leave no little shards of pot. What’s this?’

He picked up a scrap of parchment which lay on the stone flags. Theodore thought at first he must have dropped his ink recipe, it was a little torn-off slip like it; but his recipe was safely tucked away in the scriptorium. It could not be. There was something written there, though. As Father Matthew read the writing on the little chit, his eyes widened and his eyebrows rose higher and higher. Brother Theodore watched him apprehensively. At last, the novice master looked up at him.

‘Do—do you recognise this hand?’ he spluttered. ‘Whose drunken scrawl is this? Can a brother of this house be responsible for this… this… this… well, read it!’

So overcome was he with horror and disgust, that he held out the thing to Theo, who took it and read it with some curiosity. It was a poem, written in Latin. Father Matthew, having second thoughts, twitched the parchment out of Theodore’s hand. ‘No, no, you should not be reading such filth. Heaven bless us, what a thing!’

But Theodore, who spent all his days working with Latin texts in the scriptorium, had scanned and understood what he read, which roughly translated as this:

This vigil is long.

What time I have sat here,

Watching the candle flame’s

Slow, passionate exploration kiss the night.

The blind and gentle thrusting tongue of light

Finds out the secrets of the dumb receptive dark.

Her sensuous silence trembles with delight.

He did indeed recognise that drunken scrawling script. He had referred to it a dozen times that afternoon as he mixed up his pot of blue ink.

Father Matthew crumpled it in his hand. He was really shocked by what he had read.

‘Did you recognise the hand, Brother?’ he asked. ‘To think that a monk should pen such words!’

‘Maybe.’ Brother Theodore hesitated. ‘The young man who came to see you this morning stood here some while, Father. This is the kind of thing that young men sometimes write.’

Father Matthew was visibly relieved. ‘Ah yes, it must be so! Then I shall give it to his father. The young lad’s priest should know. His soul is in danger if he is prey to such sensual and lascivious ramblings.’

‘No! Um… no, Father. Perhaps I should take it to Father Abbot. He should see it, surely? It may be that one of the brethren wrote it, after all, and besides, the lad plans to enter our cloisters. Father should know, don’t you think?’

‘Yes. Yes, Brother, indeed. I will take it to him after we have said Office. You are right.’

‘I could take it,’ said Theodore hastily. ‘I am going there directly once I have mopped up this floor. I—I won’t look at it again, I give you my word. I’ll just take it to him.’

Father Matthew looked suspiciously at Theodore. Theo looked as innocent and submissive as it was in his power to do.

‘I should like… I should like to confess to Father Abbot that I caught a glimpse of those words, and seek his counsel,’ he murmured. It worked.

Father Matthew nodded soberly.

‘Very well, but I charge you under obedience not to read it again.’

And he gave the incriminating verse into Theo’s care.

Brother Theodore swilled away the spilled beer, his gut still swarming with butterflies as Father Matthew vanished from sight. Returning the pail with all speed lest the novice master should think better of his decision, he hurried to the abbot’s house, and found Peregrine just setting off for chapel.

‘Father, please, have you a moment? The bell’s not rung yet.’ Peregrine looked at him in surprise, and stepped back to admit him into his lodging. ‘Yes, Brother?’

‘Father Matthew found this in the cloister. I think you might have dropped it when you pulled your handkerchief out of your pocket this morning.’

He smoothed the crumpled parchment in his fingers as he spoke, and gave it to the abbot who took it and looked down at it. Peregrine took a deep breath.

‘Father Matthew read this?’ Never before and never afterwards could Brother Theodore recall seeing his abbot so completely disconcerted.

‘What—what did he say?’ Peregrine enquired, red faced.

‘He was not too—he didn’t appreciate its beauty, but he was generous enough to believe that no brother of ours could have written such a thing. He was happy to swallow the suggestion that the young lad who came this morning might like to write poetry.’

‘You have read this?’

‘But briefly. He asked me if I recognised the hand, showed it to me, then thought better of it, fearing to corrupt my innocence. He consented to let me bring it to you, and put me on obedience to look at it no more.’

‘Yes. Well, he was right.’ The abbot turned away and took the crumpled poem to his table, and put it inside his box of sealing waxes. ‘I will burn it later.’

‘No.’ Brother Theodore shook his head. ‘Don’t burn it. He may have been correct, but he was not right. He doesn’t know what life is; he doesn’t know. He hasn’t known what it is to be in black darkness, and won, revived by the tender wooing of light. He doesn’t know. The filth is his; the poem is not filth. Don’t burn it.’

‘Filth? Is that what he said?’ Father Peregrine pondered the judgement. ‘I hadn’t meant it so. It seemed a thing of wonder, that silent, lovely mating of the darkness with the light. A hallowed thing. I am sorry if I have degraded that loveliness.’

‘Father…’ Theodore begged, ‘can I read it once more? Please. It was beautiful.’ The abbot looked at him, torn between propriety and the understanding that lay between them. Then, ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘You have read it once. The harm is done, if harm there be.’

Theo retrieved the shabby scrap and read it through.

‘I’d like to put this at the end of your book of Hours. It is lovely.’

‘You’ll do no such thing! Put it away, Brother, the bell is ringing for Office. We must go. Thank you for saving my blushes.’

Theodore smiled. ‘You’ve shielded me often enough. I need no thanks.’

When the midday Office and meal were over, Father Matthew went in search of his abbot. Peregrine braced himself for the interview as he heard the knock at the door.

‘Father, might I have a word with you?’ The abbot’s stomach tightened into a knot at the discreet, confidential tone of his novice master’s voice. He managed a pallid smile.

‘Be seated. Have you come to talk to me about this verse you found?’

‘You have seen it then? I trusted Brother Theodore to bring it straight to you. He is a sore trial, but he is honest, I believe. I was shocked and ashamed to discover evidence of such lewd and inflamed imaginings in this holy place. Brother Theodore wondered if it might be the work of the young man who was here this morning. If you think it may be so, I will take it upon myself to inform his confessor. The thought that it be not his, but may be the shameless fantasy of one of our brethren is almost too much to contemplate. Did you know the script?’

‘Yes.’ Peregrine looked at him helplessly. He moistened his lips with his tongue.

‘Brother… the poem is mine.’

The weights and balances of all the world readjusted in the incredulity of Father Matthew’s silence. A hundred angels shut their eyes tight and stopped their ears and held their breath in dread of his reply.

‘Yours?’ He was absolutely thunderstruck.

‘Yes. I’m sorry it so distressed you. It… please believe I had not intended any lewdness. There is a place, in the mind of a man of God, for reverence of carnal love in its beauty, surely? As there is a place for Solomon’s love canticle in the canon of Scripture.’

‘The Song of Songs,’ said Father Matthew coldly, ‘is an allegory of the love between Christ and his church.’

‘Well, I don’t know…’ Peregrine demurred. ‘Solomon was a long time before Christ. It reads a bit more lively than that to me.’

Father Matthew shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Sacred Scripture is then to be taken thus lightly? Compared with such verse as this thing you have written?’

‘No. No, of course not. I didn’t mean my scribblings were of that standard. Matthew, I’m sorry, I’m very sorry to have offended you. I don’t know what else to say. I beg your pardon. It was not meant for anyone’s eyes but mine. I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry you wrote it, or sorry I saw it?’

It is possible to push a man too far. A flash of irritation shone a warning spark in the abbot’s eye.

‘Sorry you saw it, since you ask. I would never willingly offend you, you know that, but don’t you think you are being a little bit prudish?’

A tremor shook Father Matthew’s upright frame.

‘I strive for purity in my innermost being,’ he replied.

Peregrine sighed. ‘Well, you’ve achieved it in good measure. Father Matthew there is nothing else I can say. I’m sorry, I beg your forgiveness. Is there anything further you wish to discuss?’

Poor Father Matthew. He retreated from his abbot’s house a saddened and disillusioned man. He came that evening into Compline, and sat scowling in thought in his stall. What was the world coming to? His eye fell on the candle flame as it moved in the slight draught. He watched it, intrigued, as it dipped and swayed, swelled and pointed, shivered and moved in the air current. He watched the hungry urgency of the flame push against the gathering dark, and a tingle of unfamiliar life stirred somewhere inside him. ‘Heaven help us, he’s right,’ he acknowledged reluctantly.

He paused by the abbot’s stall as the brothers filed out of chapel, and almost spoke; but they were in silence, and it would not do to break the rule. Father Matthew lay awake in his bed for some time that night, troubled by a dim uneasiness. It was the closest he ever came to understanding that ‘he came that we might have a proper code of behaviour’ is not the same as ‘he came that we might have life’. But he chose in the end to take refuge in sleep, murmuring the words from the 139th Psalm, ‘Proba me Deus, et scito cor meum: interroga me, et cognosce spiritas meas. Ei vide, si via iniquitatis in me est, et deduc me in via aeterna… Examine me, O God, and know my heart: probe me and search my thoughts. Look well if there be any way of wickedness in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.’

The words that Theodore clung to for healing, Matthew scoured his soul with before he tidied it away, clean, to sleep. God, in his unfathomable silence was content for them each to find what they could in his book. No doubt he also heard the abbot’s last silent meditations from the same Psalm.

For all these mysteries I thank you:

For the wonder of my being, the wonder of your works.

You know me through and through.

You saw my bones take shape

As my body was being formed in the secret

Dark of my mother’s womb.

It had never struck me before, the sensuous, very physical intimacy of those words, but as Mother spoke them, I could almost feel it, see it; the close, fluid world of the foetus, turning in the darkness that changed from red gold to deep red, to velvet blackness, depending on where the mother’s body was. The silent dance of creation, a symphony of mysteries woven together; bone, sinew, skin. The hands of God hidden from sight, working from the spirit outwards with absorbed tenderness, creating toes, shoulders, shaping the cranium, the long curve of the spine, the delicate intricacies of the lungs. Not to be despised, a human being, in all its weakness and helpless desire, its clumsiness and frailty. A thing of beauty, a work of God’s hands. I glanced up at Mother, but I felt shy to put into words the things that were stirring in my soul. Instead, I said, ‘I’ll never look at a candle flame in the same way again!’

She smiled. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but you’ll look at it more attentively.’