UNUSUALLY, BROTHER RANDULF is among a company of men around the table. Agnes lingers as she serves, dares not join in as she would were the three of them alone.
For near a month a comet has lingered over Francian skies and talk of what it portends is the only talk in town. Her father tolerates it for one round of ale. ‘Enough,’ he says then. ‘You sound like a mob of pagan peasants.’
‘We are speaking as many in this good and godly place are,’ Brother Randulf says.
Her father dismisses him with the flick of a wrist. ‘You can witter on about portents day and night, and it will not change a thing on God’s earth nor above it.’
Is the English Priest saying portents are not real? the gathered men want to know. Is it his view that God does not see fit to warn His people through such signs? Does he not believe the magi followed the Star of Bethlehem to the Christ child? Can he be so sure that this comet above is not a message like these others? How are we to know how to live, if not by the signs God sends us?
Brother Randulf cuts through the clamour: ‘I am inclined to agree with the good English Priest, brothers. While it is true the Lord has on occasion communicated His will or warning through the heavens, those signs have been dazzling, insistent and accompanied by others of their kind. This lone, soft streak is like a red-skied morning or an uncommonly bright river flower: a reminder of the infinite variety of God’s creation, but nothing more.’
Oh, Agnes thinks. You are a truly, truly brilliant man.
Thick and heavy silence, and she grows aware the men are looking at her where she stands behind her father’s chair, ale jug in hand. Her father does not turn but his shoulders square, threateningly attentive.
‘This is not a conversation for ladies,’ he says.
Had she spoken aloud? The horror in some of these faces, amusement in others, tells her yes. She cannot bear to look at Brother Randulf before she flees to the kitchen. When she next sees him alone she will explain. As a child in the woods she would speak her thoughts to the frogs and birds, the piglets and grasshoppers. Oh, you are a mischievous imp. Oh, you are a funny little beauty. Just like this she has expressed her warmth and affection to him, her friend, Brother Randulf, forgetting such exuberance has no place in the adult world. He will understand, she is sure. He knows well the way her mind takes flight, knows she must sometimes bite down on her tongue so as not to exclaim her wonder and joy like a fool or a drunk. Like a child.
From the doorway, she listens as Brother Randulf continues. While he does not believe the comet is a portent, the people’s panic must be taken seriously. He has seen, in his travels, a man burnt alive as a tempestarius after heavier than usual rain ruined already meagre crops. He has seen a woman’s tongue cut from her mouth for calling forth a hail storm that destroyed the year’s wheat one day before harvest.
‘And I have seen worse than all that done to zealots who would not leave well enough alone,’ her father says. ‘So long as the people pray to the true God, we need not take their fairy stories from them as well. Our God is mighty enough to withstand the unintended insults of the foolish.’
The other men attempt to redirect the discussion to the possibility that this may indeed be a warning from God and that ignoring it is to condemn all people—superstitious or not—to pain and torment, but it is clear tonight is a contest between Brother Randulf and the English Priest, and before long the others are drawn onto its ground.
‘It is true,’ one says, ‘that there is fear and blame afoot in town. They say this comet is our last warning and it must be heeded.’
‘Indeed,’ says another, ‘there are those in this city have lived un-biblically for too long and the Lord will rain fire if it continues. So it is said.’
‘I’ve heard nothing of the sort,’ says another man. ‘But, then, I so rarely consort with churls and fishwives.’
‘I myself heard several such concerns in the market today,’ Brother Randulf says. ‘Kind Christian folk worried for the bodies and souls of certain sinners whose cloaks of piousness are known to be often discarded.’
There is accusation in his tone, though Agnes cannot determine its cause.
She creeps closer, sees that Brother Randulf and her father have eyes only for one another. The other men might as well have left hours ago so little do they matter in this room.
‘It is late,’ her father says, although it is not. He stands and the others do the same, gather cloaks and caps, leave quickly. One of the men leans into her father and whispers a few words before he goes. Her father stands still for a frighteningly long time.
The following day her father proclaims she is not to be alone in the company of Brother Randulf again. Not even on walks through the town. She has become far too familiar with him, and he with her. It is improper, and he, her father, is regretful he has not seen this earlier.
Agnes argues, and when that does not turn him she weeps, which only makes him surer. Such a womanly display of emotion is a clear sign that her regard for Randulf is not scholarly nor spiritual nor amicable. Nor could it ever be, as—and again her father takes full blame for not acting on this awareness earlier—she is no longer a child, and godly friendships between men and women are not possible.
Seeing he has worked himself into a priestly rage and that any further objection will result in a slap or worse, Agnes accepts his edict, says she will pray for forgiveness. She kneels by the bed in apparent supplication, makes a list in her head of all of the spiritually pure friendships between holy men and women. Paul and Thecla. Jerome and Paula. Of course, of course, Jesus and Martha too. Jesus and Mary. How could her father call these bonds ungodly? He is ungodly in his inability to understand amicitia. Ungodly in forgetting Christ’s command to Love each other as I have loved you.
Her father leaves for the day, and within moments she has donned her cloak and boots. Righteousness is a wind at her back as she walks to the south edge of town then begins the climb to the abbey where Brother Randulf lodges. It is a clear, warm day, and from halfway up the hill she can see a trader boat approaching the Mainz port. From the top she sees far across the river to the old Roman arch at Kastel. Beyond that there are roads and woodlands she cannot name. She is struck by how much world there is around her and how little of it she knows.
Agnes turns her back on the view, the thought, and approaches the abbey. If the attending monk is surprised to see a lone woman at the gates he does not show it. He escorts her to a small courtyard with a stone bench, and bids her wait there while he fetches Brother Randulf.
Sweat drips from her neck into her tunic, from her forehead into her eyes. The climb was not so hard, but it is unseasonably hot and there is no breeze at all. Still, the courtyard is sheltered from the sun by the walls of the church and more peaceful than any place she has been.
Though I have barely been anywhere at all, she remembers.
Footsteps from a dark passageway and then there is Brother Randulf. He stops short on seeing her.
‘You should not be here, Agnes. Your father—’
‘My father is a fool.’
His face reddens and he moves towards her. ‘The walls have ears. Hush yourself.’ He nods at the gate she came through. ‘We may walk a little.’
It is baking hot on the bare hillside, yet Randulf strides towards the river as though his blood needs heating.
‘I am the fool,’ he says, when they are some way from the abbey. ‘I told the English Priest of gossip in town. I meant it as a stab at him. I should have foreseen he would turn his gaze on me. On you.’
‘Brother, you must know I am innocent in my affections.’
He does not look at her. ‘Your outburst last night suggests otherwise.’
‘I was only—’
‘It doesn’t matter, Agnes. I cannot be near to you. Go home.’
He takes off forcefully through mud-thick river reeds and she struggles to keep up, her boots made heavier with each boggy step.
‘Please stop,’ she calls. ‘Please, brother.’
He does, turns, still some distance away.
‘You must know my love for you is of a sister for her brother. There is no reason for our friendship to end.’
He watches his feet as though they will run off without him. ‘Your words last night stripped away a veil. Your father has seen what I have tried to deny.’
‘No, no. It is only my undisciplined mouth! As a child, when the frog would leap just so and I would exclaim out loud—’
‘I am no frog and you no child.’
‘Brother, please, I—’
‘I am no brother to you! Hear me, Agnes. I feel for you as a husband for his wife. That is what your father saw. You are not safe with me.’
It is as though he has thrown her across the back of a courser and slapped it with a switch of fire. It takes a long moment for her mind to catch up. By the time she protests that she feels as safe as a swaddled babe in arms, he has moved far ahead and she must run, her feet sinking deep with each step. When she reaches his side he turns on her in fury.
‘Why will you not go? Oh, if you knew my thoughts you would flee!’
The crack in his voice! The wildness in his eyes! Oh, what thoughts they must be to create such a storm in him. Tell me all, she wants to say.
‘You are too hard on yourself, brother,’ she says instead. ‘Even the sainted father of your order struggled with impure thoughts.’
He smiles unhappily. ‘Would you have me roll in thorns and bramble, Agnes?’
An image from Benedict’s vita comes to her: the venerated monk naked, pale skin lacerated and burred, face ravaged with pain. She has known the story most of her life, never once considered the why of it.
‘Why did he do that, the thorns and bramble? Why not prayer and fasting?’
Randulf considers the question, as though they are back at her father’s table discussing a point of canon law. ‘When a person is consumed by physical torment it can be difficult to fully attend to spiritual tasks. Pain can be an intermediary salve.’
‘Are you in torment, brother, truly?’
‘Truly, yes.’ He looks to the sky. ‘For reasons only He knows, God has made you male of mind and heart, and female of form. Perhaps if I did not have such a base and sinful nature I would be able to enjoy the friendship and love of the man without wanting to lay with the woman.’
Mud seeps into her shoes and something like it clots her mind. Men at her father’s table speak of this act as though it were as necessary as food or prayer. This fool has acted the goat, but who can blame him when his wife is ill all the time? This lad must be found a wife before he falls on his poor old cow. Benedict in the brambles and Randulf in torment and her own father betraying all to lay on her mother and nobody ever speaks about why. The beasts do it so there will be more beasts, but why, if not for that, are these men driven so?
‘Why?’ she asks. ‘Why is it you want to lay with me?’
‘For the love of God, Agnes! Do not ask me such things. I cannot speak of this with you.’
‘Speak of it to the man in me. This great friend of your heart and mind. Tell him.’
He laughs, the sound tight and mean. ‘And here is proof after all that no part of you is a man. A man as grown as you would not need to ask such things.’
‘You are angry with me and I am sorry for that. I only want to understand what it is, this force that must tear through and wreck bodies and lives and friendships.’
‘It is better to never know. How I wish I did not. Once you have felt what it is to—’
‘But you are a monk!’
‘I have been trying to tell you, Agnes, that I am in fact a man. I am a man who knows that when a man joins his body with a woman it is … Ah! It is … You want to know? Truly? It is as though I am a small child again running wild through the woods behind my parents’ home and the harder I run the more I want to run. So I do, faster and harder and further, and then all at once there is a stream before me and I leap like a panting deer and plunge into the coolest, clearest, sweetest water, and it is like that even when I care nothing for the woman and the woman cares nothing for me. It is like that and, knowing this, I can’t help thinking how much more it would be with a woman I cherish better than any other soul on earth. To emerge from the stream and be held in the heated gaze of love.’
‘Oh.’
A shiver passes through her, and when it is gone they are in near darkness. The preternaturally clear and bright sky has turned heavy and purple. The panicked cries of blackbirds flocking overhead is everything for a moment and then there is silence thick as a dungeon wall.
Randulf stares at her as though she conjured the change herself. ‘Enough. Go home now.’
‘I will not.’
‘You must. Look how the sky darkens.’
The sky, my heart, my world. All growing dark too quickly, she thinks.
‘I do not wish to go home. I wish to lay with you.’
‘Oh, Lord. Agnes. No.’ His head back in his hands.
The mud sucks at her feet as she moves closer, places her hands over his, draws them from his face. ‘I wish to know what you know. I wish for you to show me.’
He looks at her in the eerie light and at once there is a heat in her that could boil the river dry.
‘You don’t know what you’re saying. Go home. Go now.’
If she opens her mouth she will set him alight with her breath. Burn him to ashes where he stands.
If she stays silent she will combust like a hay store.
‘I know well what I am saying, brother. Believe me on this.’
Faster than a hare he springs, brings her down into the reeds, lifts her skirt. Pain so searing she thinks something has gone terribly wrong, but soon it subsides and she is flat, full, stifled. His eyes are blurred as a drunk’s; the grim, determined line of his mouth as strange and frightening as the light. He is running for that stream and she is the grass trampled beneath his feet. A sound like a man falling from a roof, a sudden lifting of the weight and then his violent shuddering into the mud.
‘Agnes.’ He is on his knees, weeping. ‘You have—’
His words are stopped by an unearthly noise. Water erupts from the river and they stare at each other, shockingly, insensibly wet. The earth tilts, they tumble, cling together in the reeds as the purple sky swells like the sea, and branches and birds rain down.