CHAPTER SIX

God’s Wounds

Mother and I walked slowly up the hill to church. It was a warm, still evening, the sun was sinking behind the trees. Their leaves had begun to turn yellow and a few were falling. Our church was built on the edge of the common land that led up to the cliffs, on the outskirts of the town; a little oasis of countryside undisturbed by the spread of housing estates.

The bell was tolling slowly for Evensong as we strolled along the church path, and the tower clock chimed the half-hour as we settled into our pew. Mrs Crabtree was there, and the Misses Forster, elderly twins who dressed the same in pale green macintoshes and grey suede shoes. Two rows in front of us sat Mr and Mrs Edenbridge, very upright and correct. She was very smart, as always, in a coat with a fur collar and a rather expensive hat. He was immaculately turned out in his grey suit, the bald dome of his head, above the snow white hair that fringed it, shining pink in the lamplight. Across the aisle, Stan Birkett the dustman was hurrying into his pew as Father Bennett swept out of the vestry, paused to bow ceremoniously to the altar, and then turned to face us, booming, ‘Hymn number three hundred and eighty-one: “Crown him with many crowns.” Hymn number three eight one.’

That was an ambitious hymn for Evensong, long and loud. I was glad Mrs Crabtree was sitting in front of us and not behind us as the congregation started to sing, and the enthusiastic dissonance of her voice made itself felt.

Crown him with many crowns,

The Lamb upon his throne…

A late wasp droned lazily across the church, its aimless, floating path carrying it to the pew in front of us. It settled there and walked about a bit. It stopped to wash its face.

Ye who tread where he has trod,

Crown him the Son of Man,

Who every grief hath known

That wrings the human breast,

And takes and bears them for his own…

The wasp took off again, drifting towards the front of the church. Its flight carried it up towards Mr Edenbridge’s right shoulder, and he suddenly became aware of its buzzing. He must have been one of those people who are afraid of wasps, because in instinctive recoil, he ducked his head and gave a little, hoarse, hastily-muffled cry, flapping his hymnbook at his shoulder. The wasp veered away, and dropped from view into the pew behind him. Mrs Edenbridge, who stood on her husband’s left, was looking at him in surprise. He, oblivious to her astonishment, continued peacefully with the singing of the hymn:

His glories now we sing,

Who died and rose on high;

Who died, eternal life to bring

And lives that death may die.

Crown him the Lord of peace…

The wasp arose from the pew again, ascending behind Mr Edenbridge’s head. He could hear it, but not see it. He spun round in panic, beating the air about his head with his hymn book. His wife stared at him in amazement. The wasp had changed course and was now sitting quietly on a pillar.

Mr Edenbridge resettled his glasses on his nose and glanced at his wife. ‘Wasp,’ he mouthed, silently. ‘Wasp.’

She looked at him in blank incomprehension. Father Bennett, aware of an undercurrent of commotion among his flock, was eyeing Mr Edenbridge with disfavour over the top of his hymnbook.

‘Wasp! Wasp! There’s a wasp!’ whispered Mr Edenbridge loudly to his wife, who was rather deaf. She looked around, looked down behind her, looked behind him. He too began to look around for the wasp. It was nowhere in sight.

Then it came sailing across in front of Mrs Edenbridge, and she jumped backwards in alarm. Mr Edenbridge lashed out at it hysterically with his hymnbook, but it dodged him and flew away.

Crown him the Lord of love;

Behold his hands and side—

Rich wounds yet visible above,

In beauty glorified…

‘Hrrmph!’ Mr Edenbridge cleared his throat, and applied himself to the hymn again. He had seen Father Bennett watching him, suspiciously.

All hail Redeemer, hail!

For thou hast died for me;

Thy praise shall never, never fail

Throughout eternity!

The wasp was sitting innocently on the rim of the lamp overhead, washing itself.

‘Dearly beloved…’ began Father Bennett in forbidding tones. I picked up the prayer book and looked hard at the words of the prayer, quelling with an effort the giggles rising inside me.

‘Whatever was the matter with Mr Edenbridge tonight?’ asked Mother as we walked down the church path afterwards. I looked back up the path. Father Bennett, standing on the doorstep to bid his congregation ‘Goodnight’ as they departed, was offering Mr Edenbridge a distinctly cool handshake.

‘Oh, Mother, didn’t you see it? There was a wasp!’

‘Is that what it was? No, I was concentrating on the hymn. It’s one of my favourites: “Rich wounds yet visible above, in beauty glorified.” I love that one. So it was a wasp. Poor man. Father Bennett was looking rather sourly at him by the end of the hymn.’

‘Father Bennett couldn’t see it. Mother, will you tell me a story? There’s time, walking home.’

‘All right then. I’ll tell you a story if you make me a cup of tea when we get in.’

‘Mother! I always do!’

‘I always tell the stories. Have I told you Brother James’ story? No? I didn’t think so. He wasn’t Brother James yet, at the time of this story. It was before he took his first vows. His name was Allen Howick. It was singing that hymn tonight that reminded me of this story. It’s about the wounds of Christ.’

Allen Howick was born in the year 1295, and throughout his childhood was loved—adored even—as the only child of his father and mother. He grew up into a fine, handsome, young man, whose mother denied him nothing, and whose father, a silversmith, a master craftsman, intended to bequeath to his son all his treasure, all his skill and all his business acumen. Allen enjoyed a privileged status in the small society in which he lived (the parish of St Alcuin’s on the edge of the Yorkshire moors, served from the Benedictine abbey of that name). He was a wealthy, well-fed, well-favoured young man. By his twentieth year, he was a much coveted prize as a husband, and there were no fewer than five lasses making sheep’s eyes at him at Mass on Sundays and dreaming about him in bed at night. In short, he was a big fish in a small pool, thoroughly spoiled and wanting for nothing. He had everything. Life had nothing left to give him that he hadn’t already got, and he was peevish, discontented and bored. The village lasses, eager to win him as a husband, had tried to put a little on deposit by securing him as a lover. He’d had them all and they were nice, but he had to confess, with a certain sense of amazement, that even sex bored him now.

He came up early to Mass, one Sunday morning. He was out of sorts and more than a little hungover from a party the previous night. It had been his birthday and he had celebrated in style. Now he had twenty years behind him and a foul taste in his mouth.

One of the brothers (it was Brother Francis) was opening the great doors of the abbey church as Allen walked up the stone steps. Allen had never really noticed Brother Francis before, but he supposed he must always have been there. Francis, on the other hand, well knew Allen and his family, knew it had been his birthday and was surprised to see him out of bed at all. One glance told him what Allen had been doing the night before and that its legacy this morning was a thick tongue and a muzzy head. He grinned at him. ‘Fine morning,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Been celebrating?’

There was something in the innocent enquiry that caused Allen to look at him suspiciously. He flushed slightly, put on his dignity by the twinkle in Brother Francis’ eye.

‘Yes, if it’s any of your business,’ he retorted, and stalked past him into the church.

He sat hunched up in his family bench, and watched Francis as he walked purposefully up the aisle, his cheerfulness evidently undented by Allen’s rudeness. Francis disappeared through a door in the north wall of the church, and Allen was left on his own.

The spring sunshine streamed gloriously through the great window at the eastern end of the church, and he could hear birds singing. From further away the bleating of sheep carried on the wind. Otherwise, all was quiet. Allen looked around the huge, empty building. Usually among the last to arrive and the first to leave, he had never been there on his own before. Lord, but it’s peaceful here, he thought, as he gazed about him. Wonder how much it cost to build it?

As he rested in the great hollow shell of tranquility and light, listening to its silence, it dawned upon him that ‘empty’ was the wrong word for this place. It was as full as could be: full of silence, full of light, full of peace. There was something about it that was almost like a person. It had—almost—its own speech. He lost the sense of it as people began to arrive in dribs and drabs, and the speaking silence was erased by their murmured conversation, the creak of the benches, the occasional stifled laugh, the shuffle and tap of shoes on the flagged floor.

The Mass was attended by the well-to-do and the respectable; farmers and merchants for the most part. They came in their Sunday finery, their wives on their arms, their sons and daughters around them. Their servants were expected to attend first Mass at five o’clock, and were busy making Sunday dinners and doing the household chores by this hour of the day.

Allen’s parents came into the church and sat down beside him. It was not like him to be early to Mass, but they knew better than to ask questions. Rosalind Appleford, the wool merchant’s daughter, shot a coquettish glance in Allen’s direction as she passed. ‘God give you good morning, Allen Howick,’ she whispered, pouting her lips just a little for his benefit. Allen raised a wan smile, then looked the other way. His obvious rejection stung her, and Rosalind began to regret last Wednesday evening, which she had spent in his arms.

‘Dominus vobiscum,’ the cantor raised his voice in the chant.

‘Et cum spirito tuo,’ responded the brothers in the choir, and the people of the parish in the nave.

Allen yawned. He found the Mass tedious. It was a question, in the main, of trying to avoid reproachful feminine eyes and enduring pangs of hunger. He sat or stood or knelt with everyone else through the rite of penance, the liturgy of the word, the abbot’s homily; but his mind was sunk in indifference, in the contempt of familiarity.

‘Pax Domine sit semper vobiscum’

‘Et cum spirito tuo,’ responded Allen automatically. Then, like a far away song, like a weak shaft of sunlight on a December day, something roused in his soul. ‘Pax Domine sit semper vobiscum. The peace of the Lord be always with you.’ Peace. Peace. He thought of the huge serene peace of the building as he had sat waiting for the people to arrive. Was it then possible to have that vast peace inside you? He had always assumed the words of the Mass to be a polite ritual, designed to humour a remote deity, keep him happy, keep him remote. But this—‘the peace of the Lord be always with you’—this invited the far-off God right in. Peace. Allen was not sure what peace was. He was not sure if he’d ever known it. He wondered vaguely if his father would permit him to convert the guest bedroom into a chapel, maybe pay the abbey to send one of the monks there to say Mass for him, so he could have that peace on hand, at home when he wanted it. It would be good to spend a spare moment sitting in the quiet, enjoying the peace of God.

One of the lads from the abbey school was singing the Agnus Dei, his voice trembling slightly in the dread of public performance.

‘Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, give us your peace.’ Allen felt as though something was wringing the inside of him. Suddenly, angrily, hungrily, he knew he didn’t have peace. He had everything else, but he didn’t have peace. He thought of Brother Francis; that cheerful, purposeful manner, unmoved by his own surliness. Peace, yes, it sat about that monk like it clung to the stones of these walls. How had he come by that peace? What had it cost him to get it?

Allen went up with the straggle of communicants and took the bread on his tongue, the body of Christ. ‘Give me your peace,’ he prayed. Sitting on the bench through the final prayers the words repeated in his mind: ‘Oh Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, give us your peace.’

He spoke to no one as he left the church and walked home. All his life, whatever he wanted, he had asked the price and it had been his. What was God asking for his peace? Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world… that, it seemed, was his price. He wanted Allen’s sin, in return for his peace. It seemed like an easy bargain. Allen thought over the past week. Wednesday night with Rosalind. Well, that was sin. Pleasant, but sin. He thought of his party the night before… luxury, drunkenness… the wasted food thrown to the dogs. In fact, the more he thought about it, the harder it was to think of anything in his life that did not bear the taint of sin. Did God want the whole of it, then, before he would part with his peace?

Allen was irritable all that day. He slept little that night, and on Monday morning sat pale, moody and silent at his workbench in his father’s shop.

‘What’s biting you?’ asked his father, as he set out his tools at his own bench. ‘You look like a jilted lover.’ He glanced questioningly at Allen. Maybe one of the lasses had made her mark. It was about time. He picked up the trinket he was working on, and bent his head over it.

‘It’s not that,’ he said. As he looked at his father, Allen felt a fluttering of apprehension. What he was about to say was unlikely to be well received. ‘It’s not that,’ he repeated, a little louder. There was an edge to his voice that his father had not heard before, and Master Howick looked with attention at his son. Allen cleared his throat nervously.

‘I’m going to be a monk at St Alcuin’s,’ he said.

His father stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’ve lost your wits,’ he said at last.

Allen shook his head. ‘No.’ His father was still staring at him, waiting for him to explain.

‘I want God’s peace,’ Allen said, feeling foolish.

‘God’s peace? Can’t you have it here at home? It’s free, isn’t it?’

‘Is it? Have you got it?’

His father blinked. ‘Me? Yes, of course. Well, I don’t know. Peace? I never thought about it.’

There followed two weeks of arguments and scenes, but in the end Allen’s determination overrode his mother’s tears and his father’s hurt bewilderment. His heart was set on the monastic life, and he meant to have it, as he’d had everything else he took a fancy for.

Allen went to see the abbot. He did not enjoy the interview. Trained to the craft of the silversmith, Allen’s hands were dexterous and precise tools, and he found the sight of the abbot’s maimed, almost useless hands disturbing, revolting. The long scar that extended all down the side of his face looked horrible too, and his jerky gait as he limped along with the aid of a battered wooden crutch, the foot of it padded with leather to silence its tapping progress, reminded Allen of the bogey-man of his mother’s nursery tales. His wounds and the fierce hawklike look of his face, with its dark eyes that seemed to pierce a man to the soul, frankly terrified Allen, but he made his request and was told that he, like any young man, was welcome to try the life.

So Allen Howick kissed his girlfriends goodbye, and dutifully embraced his parents. He would prefer to walk up to the abbey alone, he said. There was nothing to be gained from their company. He turned, embarrassed, from his mother’s tears, and filled with an almost intolerable mixture of elation and dread, he walked away.

His mother and father watched him go, their only child.

‘It’s worse than if he’d died,’ his mother whispered. ‘How did we fail him? We gave him everything.’

‘Not peace,’ replied her husband, with heavy sarcasm.

Their son turned the corner of the road without looking back.

Allen found life at St Alcuin’s gruelling. The night prayers, the meagre food, the hard work and the silence all combined to make him irritable and weary beyond endurance. The other young men in the novitiate, Brother Damian and Brother Josephus, had both taken their first vows and seemed to know their way about and behaved with an easy nonchalance that grated on Allen’s strained nerves. He could not wear the habit of the order until he too took his novitiate vows, but he was given a plain, coarse, black tunic similar to the brothers’ clothes to wear, and his own soft wool and fine linen were given into Brother Ambrose’s care, in case he should change his mind and leave. Neither a brother nor the worldly lad he had been, Allen was alone in a no man’s land between two worlds. Father Matthew, the novice master, he hated. Allen had never bothered much with his studies, knowing that his passage in life was assured, and he felt degraded by Father Matthew’s detection and scrupulous exposure of his academic and spiritual weaknesses. The bitterest pill of all was the very public business of confessing his faults, kneeling on the ground, begging the brothers’ forgiveness for such trifling matters as offending against holy poverty by losing his handkerchief.

He lay at night, sleepless on the rock-hard straw bed. ‘Peace!’ the night mocked him, astir with Brother Thaddeus’ earth-shattering snore and Brother Basil’s troublesome cough, and the gibberish mumblings of Brother Theodore’s dreams; ‘Peace!’

In spite of it all he sensed something. He didn’t know quite what it was, because he didn’t have it himself, but he sensed something in some of these men: an assurance, humour, tranquillity—hang it, peace! How did they get it? Allen ached for it.

He could feel it in the abbot, though he was afraid of him. He could not analyse it. In the brief moments of the one or two occasions he had dared to return the gaze of those dark grey eyes, Allen had glimpsed unfathomable depths of sadness, resignation, warmth… a mixture of things, and behind them all an extraordinary vital gladness that didn’t fit with the lameness and disfigurement. Somewhere, Allen reflected, as he worked in silence at his task of book-binding, that man is saying ‘yes’ where I am saying ‘no’. But yes to what?

‘How did Father Columba get his scars?’ he asked Brother Josephus one evening as they sat in the novitiate community room for the hour’s recreation after supper. He had been only eleven years old when the abbot was crippled and his hands were broken, and he had not been interested in the village gossip of adult life in those days.

‘Who? Oh, Father Peregrine. He was beaten up by enemies of his father’s house eight—no nine—years ago.’

Allen digested this information. He wanted to ask another question, but hated to look uninformed. His curiosity got the better of him eventually: ‘Why do you all call him Father Peregrine?’

Brother Josephus grinned. ‘Well—does he look like a hawk or a dove?’

‘What?’

‘Columba—his name in religion—it’s the Latin word for a dove. After Saint Columba, of course, but that’s what it means. His baptismal name was Peregrine.’

Allen thought about it. ‘He… he scares me,’ he admitted, surprising himself with his own truthfulness.

Brother Josephus looked at him in astonishment. ‘Father Peregrine scares you? Why?’

Allen began to regret his honesty. ‘I—I feel as though he can look right into my heart,’ he mumbled.

Brother Josephus laughed. ‘It’s not him you’re scared of then. You’re scared that what’s hidden in your heart will be found out. What are you hiding?’

Allen stared at him for a moment then looked away. ‘I think I’ll go down early to chapel and be in good time for Compline,’ he said stiffly, and made his escape.

In the choir, one or two of the brothers knelt in prayer in the twilight gloom. Father Peregrine was sitting in his stall, the scarred face shadowed by his cowl, his maimed hands resting still in his lap. Allen couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed. He hurried to his own place and knelt there. The silence of the choir seemed oppressive, a great, swollen stillness, weighing down on him. He was glad when, ten minutes later, the bell began to ring for Compline and the community filed in and filled the shadows with the music of their chant.

Then, silence again, the deep, deep silence of the night, the Great Silence that took a man down with it and would not let him ignore the doubts and fears that daylight business crowded out.

Allen slept fitfully, as always, and felt bone-tired in the morning. After first Mass he trailed up the stairs to the novitiate schoolroom. Father Matthew greeted him with the information that Father Abbot wished to see him that morning to discuss his progress. Allen turned round and plodded back through the scriptorium where the scribes were already busy with their copying and illumination work, and down the day stairs to the cloister. He met Brother Theodore on the stairs. One of the fully-professed brothers beyond the small world of the novitiate, Allen didn’t know Theodore very well, but the quick appraisal of Theodore’s glance discovered his weariness, and there was something comforting in the smile he gave Allen as he passed.

Allen was relieved to have escaped a morning studying the latest arguments for and against predestination, but he was not looking forward to being alone with the abbot. He hesitated outside the door of the abbot’s lodging, which was as usual ajar, then knocked. He walked into the large, sparsely furnished room and shut the door behind him. The abbot was at his table, reading through some documents.

‘A moment, and I shall be with you, my son,’ he said, and glanced up at Allen momentarily. Then he looked up again, his attention arrested. ‘Faith, boy, you look weary. Don’t sit on that stool. Fetch the chair from the corner there. You need something to lean on, by the look of you. I won’t keep you but a minute.’

Allen fetched the chair and sat on it, watching Father Peregrine’s face as he finished the perusal of his documents and then put them aside. The abbot smiled at him, and the kindness of his smile, in that fierce, uncompromising face, took Allen by surprise.

‘Well? Hard going?’

The frank sympathy with which he spoke brought sudden, completely unexpected tears to Allen’s eyes. Hard going? By all holy, it was hard going! He blinked the tears away furiously, but didn’t trust himself to speak. He stared hard at the inkstand on the table, determined not to betray his exhaustion and turmoil.

‘My son, why did you come?’ asked Father Peregrine, quietly. That, at least, Allen could answer, and the moment perilously close to tears was over.

‘I came to find God’s peace,’ he replied.

The abbot nodded. ‘Have you found it?’

Allen looked at him, wearily. This man could see right into him. He could see that, couldn’t he?

‘You know I haven’t found it.’

‘Do you want to go on looking, or have you had enough?’

Allen thought. To go home… home to a good fire, a soft bed, a bath whenever he wanted one. Home to his mother seeing to all his needs, to lying abed in the mornings sometimes… to an undisturbed night’s sleep.

‘But if I go now…’ Allen paused. ‘Well, where would I go? I can’t spend the rest of my life walking away from it, can I? I couldn’t bear it. I don’t… I don’t really feel as though I have a choice. Apart from that, yes, I’ve had enough. More than enough.’ He felt the lump rise in his throat again and thought he’d better stop talking.

‘If it’s any consolation,’ said Father Peregrine, ‘which it may not be, I felt very much as you do. And… God turns no one away. He will give you the peace you crave.’

Allen leaned forward in his chair. ‘When did you—how did you find it?’

The abbot smiled, ‘It’ll give you little comfort if I tell you. I found the peace of God, really, surely, for always found it, just nine years ago. I was forty-seven. And I wouldn’t recommend anyone to find it the way I did.’

Allen looked at him in horror. ‘Forty-seven!’

Father Peregrine laughed at him. ‘I’ll pray for you, my son, every day, until you find the peace of God. I know what it is to hunger for it, believe me.’

He talked to Allen a little longer, asked some more questions, let him talk a while, then said, ‘Father Matthew will be chiding me if I keep you longer from your instruction. He says… he feels you can do with as much schooling as you can get.’

‘Thank you, Father.’ Allen got to his feet, and returned the chair to its corner. He felt obscurely encouraged. This rather alarming man seemed to know, and care, how he felt.

‘Forty-seven,’ he said as he put the chair down. ‘God’s wounds, that’s a long time to wait.’

He turned towards the door.

‘Just a minute.’

Allen looked back at the abbot, and was startled. Father Peregrine’s eyes were ablaze with anger, his mouth set like a trap. He looked furious. Allen’s jaw dropped. He stared in astonishment.

‘If I ever hear you speak of the wounds of Christ again with such blasphemous levity, I will have you flogged, I give you my word.’

‘Oh. Sorry,’ said Allen, stupidly.

‘That is not how we say it here,’ replied his abbot, still angry but not quite so furious.

Allen knelt hastily on the stone floor. ‘I humbly confess,’ he said, as he had learned to do, ‘my—my blasphemy. I ask your forgiveness Father, and God’s.’

‘No doubt God forgives you, and so do I. Now get up off your knees and hear this.’ The abbot was still very angry. Allen stood up bewildered. Whatever had got into the man? It was only a figure of speech.

‘Christ Jesus your God,’ said Peregrine, fixing him with the fierce eyes that had made most of the brethren quail at one time or another, ‘was mocked by the Roman soldiers. They blindfolded him and beat him with sticks, laughing at him, saying, “Who hit you then, prophet?” They stripped him naked and then dressed him up as a king. They crowned him with a cap of thorns. They flogged him until he bled, and they had him carry his cross on that bleeding back through the streets of Jerusalem until he fell under it. He lay on the torn skin of his back on the cross, and stretched out his arms and suffered the soldiers to hammer nails through his wrists. Nails that hurt him so… that convulsed his hands into claws. Have you ever wounded your hands, boy?’

Allen shook his head. He had never wounded anything, beyond the grazed knees of childhood.

‘It is hideous pain. It is agony. Do you remember what he said—Jesus—the words he prayed as they hammered nails into his hands on the cross? Well? What did he say—or have you forgotten?’

Allen moistened his lips nervously. ‘He said, “Father forgive them.”’

‘Yes. Would you have said such a thing in that moment? No. Well may you shake your head in silence. Nor would I. Five years, ten years later maybe, but not then. The pain of it… I would… I would have begged, not for their forgiveness, but in terror, for mercy. I… did. They hoisted him up on the cross. A crucified man, my son, dies of suffocation from the weight of his own body. Three hours he hung there, shifting his weight from the nails through his feet to the nails through his wrists, scraping his flayed back on the wood of the cross. He did it because he loved us. He chose it, wanted it. It was the price of our peace. I say again: if I ever hear you make light of his wounds with your blasphemy, I will have you beaten until your back bleeds as his bled, and leave you to imagine the rest.’

‘Father, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I didn’t think. I…’

‘Whatever have you been thinking about while you’ve been here then?’ Peregrine roared at him. Allen stood, silent.

‘Well? What have you been thinking about?’

Allen felt as small and scared as a five-year-old. His well-fed, well-dressed, handsome, popular self seemed as far away and unreal now as something from a dream. Trembling in his coarse black robe in the blaze of this frightening man’s indignation, he felt utterly wretched.

‘I suppose,’ he said, in a very small voice, ‘I’ve been thinking about myself.’

‘Tell me then,’ said Peregrine, the quietness of his voice no more reassuring than the roar of the moment before, ‘about yourself.’

Allen felt a trickle of sweat run down his back. Whatever was he supposed to say? The dark, fierce eyes were holding him, compelling him.

‘I thought if I gave God my sin, he would give me his peace. It says it in the Mass, that the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world gives us peace. But—all my life seemed to be sin. I gave it to him by coming here.’

‘So. That is what you thought and what you did; but you, tell me about you. You, whom Christ died for. You’ve been thinking about yourself, you say. Tell me then.’

Allen looked at him helplessly. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ The abbot’s silence gripped him like a huge pair of hands, and shook him.

‘I…’ he began huskily, ‘I used to think of myself as something special. My mother and father dote on me. I had everything: clothes, money, horses, everything I wanted. Women, too. There were several… five—there were five girls. I used them shamelessly for my pleasure. I used my parents too. There was not… never has been… any gratitude in me. Nor reverence. Nor respect. But I didn’t see it. You want to know what I am? I couldn’t have told you until now. I’m a spoiled brat.’

He stopped, caught unawares again by the lump in his throat and the tears in his eyes.

‘Thank you for answering my question,’ said the abbot. ‘As far as I can see you have answered it truthfully. You can go, then.’

Allen looked at him in horror. The tears threatened to overflow. Don’t leave me like this, he wanted to plead. You’ve stripped me of everything. I can’t face the brothers in the shame of this nakedness.

Father Peregrine met his look, looked right into him. Allen had never met a man who could look at him like that, unwavering, unembarrassed, without any inhibition at all.

‘If you’re going to weep, weep,’ said the abbot. ‘All of us do, sooner or later. You can forget any foolish notions you may have about your personal dignity when you stand as you are before Christ. Weep, then. Let him heal you of your ingratitude, and your heartless abuse of love, and your using us to achieve your own selfish spiritual ends.’

Allen wept. The bluntness of the rebuke pushed him off the edge of the composure to which he had been so precariously clinging, and he fell down and down into the loneliness of his shame. First reluctantly, then miserably, then in an abandonment of shame and disgust, he faced himself and his own sin. Not even a villain, much less a hero, just a conceited, self-centred, ungrateful lad; unexceptional, lazy and spoiled. All his vanity and artificial dignity crumbled into ruins about him, leaving him wide open, unsupported, undressed. The world he had always known seemed to draw away from him, until he stood in a great empty tract of desolation. The nothingness, the falsity of all he was, bled out of him until it filled the vast, bleak desert of his loneliness, and he was engulfed in emptiness, hopelessness; lost. There was nothing left but the abandonment of his sobbing, which embarrassed him in its uncontrolled noisiness, until not even that mattered any more.

He had never felt so alone in his life, as he stood in the middle of the stone floor in the great, comfortless room hearing the noise of his weeping, hot tears coursing down his face, consumed in loathing of himself and all he had been. All the while he was aware of the presence of the abbot, neither condemning nor consoling him, watching and understanding the depths of his shame, such utter abasement, such a seeing of his own sin and strutting foolishness. Even to be stripped naked and stood in the marketplace to endure the sniggers of passers-by would not have exposed him as the roots of his soul were now exposed. It felt as if it would never stop. He would have thought it was unbearable, except that he was too filled with shame to think anything about it at all.

‘Help me.’ The words came out brokenly, indistinctly, through his tears. He was unsure if he was addressing the abbot or God. Neither of them answered him, and in the end came the weary misery of the moment when his weeping had finished and there was nothing to do but find his handkerchief and blow his nose, dry his eyes and raise his head at last to meet the eyes of the man who sat in silence watching him. He was no longer sure what he was, who he was. Gutted of all that he had affected, all that he had taken for granted, he had nothing left but his wretchedness, his tired, hungry body, the coarse simplicity of the tunic that clothed him and the distressed unevenness of his breath. So he allowed his eyes to meet the abbot’s grey eyes, and saw there profound sadness, and deep kindness, and a compassion that clothed him again, gave the nakedness of his soul some protection against the harshness of pain and humiliation. Allen drew in his breath and let it go in an exhausted sigh. He drank in the comfort of the abbot’s compassion, of his evident understanding, but he could think of no words to say now. He could not begin to know how to move forward from the holocaust he had fallen into and start to live again; speak, act, move.

‘Sit down,’ said Father Peregrine. He picked up the wooden crutch and got to his feet. ‘Sit down and gather yourself together again. Wait for me here. I’ll not be long.’

Allen watched him as he limped across the bare austere room, his jerky gait, the awkwardness of his twisted hands as he leaned on the crutch and with both hands grappled with the great iron handle of the door. It occurred to Allen that this man had good reason to understand humiliation, and was well acquainted with suffering. Formidable he might be, but the most imposing man in the world would be overwhelmed at times by that level of disability. While he was wondering whether to help him. Peregrine conquered the door handle, and glanced across the room at Allen before he went out. Allen’s soul, stripped and washed clean, was still plain in his eyes, as clear and clean as a new sheet of parchment ready for use. The first thing written there was concern for Peregrine as he struggled with the door. Nothing patronising; insight. There was a flash of understanding between them as their eyes met again. Each had glimpsed the other’s humiliation, met it with compassion, felt it as his own.

‘Wait for me,’ said Peregrine again, and left Allen sitting alone, trying to make sense of all that he had just been through. It was as though he had just crossed the rapids of a turbulent, flooding, wild river, and was cut off for ever from the further bank on which he had lived his whole life until now. He felt as tender and naked as a newborn; as exposed as a creature that had lived all its days underground and then found itself astonishingly, painfully, in the air and dizzy light of the mountains. No doubt about it, it was a costly, hurting thing. His soul, used to covert ways and sly disguises, was sore in the breeze and brightness of its new climate, but… there was something about the very pain of it that was more exhilarating than anything he had found in the comfort and ease that had padded his life so far. Allen gave up trying to understand it, and waited, wrapped in a sort of light-headed tranquillity of exhaustion.

It was not long before the door opened again, and Father Peregrine entered, with Brother Cormac in his wake carrying a large slab of pigeon pie and a mug of ale. Cormac glanced round the room and, locating Allen in his chair in the corner, brought the food over to him. He looked down at Allen’s blotched and swollen face with a cheerful grin. ‘Hungry?’ he said. Hungry? Allen was becoming so accustomed to feeling hungry that he had almost ceased to notice it, but as he caught the smell of the food, he felt ravenously hungry, and his mouth watered for it.

He devoured the pie and downed the ale, which was not diluted this once, with single-minded absorption, while Brother Cormac chatted comfortably to Father Peregrine about the progress of planting in the vegetable gardens behind the kitchen.

‘Thank you,’ said Allen gratefully, as he gave the plate and mug back to Cormac, having chased up every crumb of pastry and drained every drop of ale. Brother Cormac took them with a smile, and there was something in his look which made Allen feel that here was someone else who understood very well indeed what he had been through, and knew just what it felt like. Allen returned his smile, wondering fleetingly if it was in this that brotherhood and peace had their roots, the losing of everything.

Father Peregrine had returned to his chair behind the table with its untidy heaps of books and parchments. ‘Thank you, Brother,’ he said to Cormac as he disappeared with the crockery, then he turned his attention back to Allen. Allen felt as warmed and fed by the kindness of that look as he was by the pie and ale that comfortably filled his belly.

‘Now go to bed,’ said the abbot, ‘and go to sleep. Sleep all you need. Get up when you’re rested.’

Allen looked at him in amazement. His whole body longed for sleep, ached for sleep, but he couldn’t quite believe his ears.

‘But—Father Matthew…’ he said doubtfully at last.

‘Father Matthew is not the ogre he seems. Nor, incidentally, am I. Leave me to speak to Father Matthew. You go to bed.’

Allen went to his cell and collapsed in sweet relief onto his hard bed. He felt drained and utterly spent, and he fell asleep instantly.

He was woken by the Office bell. He went down the night stairs to the choir, to discover to his amazement that it was time, not for the midday Office, but for Vespers. It was nearly supper-time. He had slept all day.

Brother Francis was the reader for the day. It seemed a long, long time since that Sunday morning when Allen had met him at the church door before Mass. He was reading from the book of Isaiah.

‘Ipse autem vulneratus est propter iniquitates nostras, attritus est propter scelera nostra; disciplina pacis nostra super eum, et livore ejus sanati sumus. He was pierced through for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the punishment that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed.’

Allen felt as though the words were turning him inside out. Now he was rested and fed, he was able to look beyond the confusion of misery and shame that weariness and hunger had compounded into abject desolation.

‘Upon him was the punishment that brings us peace, and by his wounds we are healed.’ Timidly, hungrily, humbly, Allen’s spirit reached up, yearned towards God. Wave upon wave upon wave of peace swept through him, cleansed him, comforted him, healed him. As he walked out of Vespers to the refectory for supper, he was bathed in peace, alight with peace, overflowing with peace.

Father Peregrine smiled as he watched him go.

After supper, Allen went up to the community room where he found Brother Josephus and Brother Damian. Brother Damian broke off his impersonation of Father Matthew discoursing on the beatitudes to look at Allen in amazement.

‘God’s wounds!’ he said. ‘Whatever happened to you?’

‘Oh, don’t say that,’ said Allen. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound like an abbot’s chapter, but don’t swear by God’s wounds, Brother Damian. He… they… the wounds of Christ are the most precious thing the world ever saw. Don’t make a blasphemy out of them.’ He blushed, embarrassed and shy; it was so thoroughly unlike himself that the two young brothers stared at him.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Brother Damian, ‘I didn’t know it mattered that much to you.’

We had reached our house before Mother came to the end of her story, and sat down on the steps to finish it uninterrupted. We stayed a moment longer, without speaking, watching the splendour of the sun going down, and then both looked round as we heard the sound of the front door opening. It was Daddy, holding his car keys.

‘Oh, there you are, you two. I thought you’d got lost; I was coming to look for you. What on earth are you doing there?’

Mother got up and smiled at him.

‘Enjoying the peace,’ she said. ‘But I’m ready for a cup of tea.’