Chapter
Three
They allocated these two rooms to the novitiate in no random manner. It’s upstairs, in the east range, so right at the back of the cloister buildings, tucked away as privately withdrawn from guests as it could possibly be. Since the main work of the day is done before noon, and studying texts forms a central part of work in the novitiate, it is well to have the morning light streaming in through the tall arched windows from the moment the sun climbs above the protective circle of hills behind the abbey. But the seclusion motivated the setting, more than the light.
This is not so of the scriptorium lodged next door. Here, it is critical to see well. Ideally, Father Clement would have liked the true, unambiguous northern light; but since the abbey church constitutes the entire north range, he couldn’t have it. At least the eastern light rises earliest. His scribes’ desks are set beneath the windows, slanting double lecterns for two men to work opposite each other. Candleholders are affixed to the upper edges of the desks – with lamp-glasses to prevent wax splashing in any sudden draught. The wall furthest from the windows is entirely full of shelves – except for the doorway through to the passage sitting above the corresponding cloister walk below. The shelves contain an abundance of resources both expensive and valuable (not always the same thing). Different sizes of sheets of a variety of thicknesses and quality of vellum. Inks, quills, reed pens, charcoal, chalks, burnishers. A multitude of bottles and stacks of small bowls for mixing gesso and size. Ink horns, knives, pumice stones, rulers, and spikes. Beautiful, almost globular glass bowls to magnify candlelight on a stormy day. Loose pages of books half-finished, or stacked ready for binding. And gold. It is a beautiful, magical place, a treasure trove of curious objects and lovely works of art. The intent, focused quality of its absorbed silence is magnified rather than diminished by the quiet scratchings and scrapings, the sounds of men breathing, shifting, getting up to cross the room, the small sounds of bowls and bottles moved. Nobody who works with feathers and leaf gold, creating wonders, is going to be noisy. Just now and then the silence is marred by someone swearing in frustration; but even that is spoken softly, exasperation in undertone.
Monks are quiet, their voices and movements discreet. Scribes are quiet, their movements careful and precise. Monastic scribes are the quietest of all, disciplined and cautious. There is nothing blatant or rambunctious about these men. Even so, their life does not lack drama. Just now, a tragedy observed but never discussed is playing out its full slow cruelty in their midst; because Father Clement, they know, is gradually going blind.
It has been his desperate hope that the abbot would permit him to train up Father Theodore to step into his place; Theo’s illumination is exquisite, and he is the best scribe among them. Father Clement’s heart sank when their abbot – not this one, Abbot Columba, his predecessor – announced in Chapter that Father Theodore would replace Father Matthew as novice master. Men in so central an obedience usually either prove disastrous in short order, or stay many years. That day in Chapter Father Clement, with all the composed restraint of a monastic scribe, bowed his head in silent acceptance of his trampled dream.
Not a young man, he was in middle age already when Theo entered the novitiate. He has poured all the ardour of his faith and his passion into creating work of excellence and artistry. He has given his life to this vocation. Knowing this, sometimes in his private prayers and when he makes his confession, he humbly asks for forgiveness that it means so much to him. He understands about the balance to be maintained – the difficult tightrope walk of monastic life – to care enough but not too much. He knows that to receive the gifts of God a man must stretch forth the empty hands of a supplicant; he understands that is what it means to be poor in spirit.
From the outset, from his first days as a postulant, it has been spelled out to him that all he is promised here is Christ and the community. To learn this way of love will ask renunciation of him every single day. He must own nothing, demand nothing, set aside his personal preferences, be content with what he is given. Making peace with disappointment is as familiar to him now as his black wool habit, as his belt supple with use, as his sandals accommodated to the particular shape of Father Clement’s feet. Coming here meant giving up any aspirations to making his mark in the world. What mark? When he took his simple vows, he gave up his name. Since then he has been Clement – after that scholar of hungry intellect scented out the trail of learning by here and by there until he finally, under Pantaenus in Alexandria, found rest. And this Clement’s abbot in his novitiate days – Father Gregory of the Resurrection – prayed that this talented, eager, passionate young man might also find rest.
Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee. So it says on the very first page of St Augustine’s Confessiones. This, like so many other texts of holy wisdom, has entered deep into Clement’s heart and lodged there. He knows the words of the Office by heart – the psalms, the prayers, the responsories. His feet know the paths of the abbey without prompting. His hand finds the rail going down the night stairs for Matins with no fumbling or groping. He is part of everything this life is. He no longer knows the difference between himself and his vocation, so faithfully has he lived it, and for so long.
And even so, the relinquishment of his sight feels unbearable. In the solitude of his cell he goes down on his knees before the crucifix, begging not for special treatment or a miracle but just for a little longer, and for someone to step into his shoes. Until recently there has been nobody. Sometimes the fine lines dance and duplicate on the page; he has to wait and tilt his head, get the angle right. On a good day and in the right light he can manage, but he is no fool. He does not delude himself. It will not be long before he cannot see. But he has this small springtime of hope in his heart that at last there is someone – only a novice still, but showing such promise. Brother Cedd, he thinks, has all the necessary qualities to step into this work. Father Theodore has seen it too, and will advise Abbot John. Clement has never been so presumptuous as to mention this dream he is nurturing; but surely, this time, they will let him have this young man, let him train up this skill. Surely. If he’s going to be blind.
The abbot’s swaybacked grey mare, a draught horse in truth, is bred for strength and steady temperament rather than speed, so Brother Thomas doesn’t delude himself he’ll be reaching Caldbeck in any tearing hurry, but he’s happy with that. It’s a beautiful day, the grey is ambling along contentedly, her substantial frame more than capable of carrying a beefy Yorkshireman and a couple of sacks of grain ten miles down the road.
He looks about him cheerfully as they go, enjoying the change of scene. The year is turning. The lady’s bedstraw and the hawkweed are finished, and the abundant salad burnet has gone too. But the birdsfoot trefoil, that the lads call eggs-and-bacon for the red and yellow of the flowers, is still colourfully scattering the way, the tiny blue eyebright flowers still peep out from among the grass, the purging flax with its delicate starry blooms, and the witches’ thimbles – harebells as they call them, blue as the dress of Our Lady. He keeps his eyes peeled for the brave purple flashes of the autumn gentians – but they don’t grow everywhere, though it is their time of year.
He reflects that if he’d had more notice of this visit he might have gone up to see if there were any bilberries left on the moor. He thinks the conditions won’t be right for them down in the valley at Caldbeck. He could have picked them some blackberries too – but then they doubtless have their own. Everyone has blackberries. That sets him off thinking about blackberry and apple dumplings with an abundance of cream poured on, and he starts to feel hungry. He wishes he’d brought a hunk of bread and cheese, or even an apple – lovely they are, just now, all juicy and crisp. He’s been helping with the harvesting, as he always does, and relishing the liberty to eat as many as he wants – the red-blushed green or yellow; some skins waxy, some rough, the indescribably tart cold sweetness that releases a shock of flavour with the first bite.
He must be half way there. He hopes Madeleine’s baked a loaf of bread today. They will have cheese for certain, now they have a cow as well as a goat – and butter. He thinks about snowy goat’s butter, such a contrast to the rich yellow of the cow’s.
Butter with a sprinkling of salt crystals mixed in, spread thick, melting into torn bread still warm from the oven, with a goodly hunk of that soft cheese Brother Conradus makes – the one wrapped in nettle leaves, and the one rolled in cracked pepper. Or the sharp, tangy hard cheese that takes forever to ripen but is worth the waiting. With plums, maybe. Or what about a cold pigeon leg? Or some stuffed chicken? All washed down with a mug of nice, cold ale.
Maybe Madeleine will have made some pease pottage – it’s good at this time of year; it has that delicate flavour while the peas and beans are yet green; before they have been dried for the winter. Now his mouth is watering.
To distract himself from the sense of desolate vacancy developing in his belly, Brother Thomas shunts his thoughts to one remove, reflecting on men he has known who don’t seem too fussed about their victuals. Thin, abstemious, fasting men, who skimp on the butter and prefer their porridge with no honey and no cream. Men who shake their head and raise a refusing hand at the offer of a second helping. Men who don’t trouble to scrape out the bowl. Such attitudes are, to him, a perpetual source of wonder. But look, now he’s back thinking about food again, which he hadn’t meant to do.
He’s glad that Brother Conradus took over from Brother Cormac in the kitchen. Life improved sharply at St Alcuin’s from that moment on. He thinks about the difference it makes who is chosen to fill which obedience. Theodore, for example, leaves Father Matthew standing when it comes to the work of a novice master. He has the knack – or better put, the graces and gifts. And Francis! Tom reflects with interest on the ready smile and irrepressible wit that were forever getting Francis into trouble – too jaunty, too blithe, too chatty, and too charming by half – right up to the point he was made prior. And suddenly, overnight, he began to look like a Godsend – so cheerful, so hospitable, so relaxed in conversation, so likeable. Find the right work for the right man, and suddenly it all makes sense.
This calls to mind a thing Father John said in a recent abbot’s Chapter – how vocation is to be worked out in community; “us”, not “me”. That no man holds all the pieces to the puzzle. That finding and affirming the gifts of each one is what is meant by St Paul’s talk of the people of God as living stones, together built into a vital, dynamic, sentient temple of praise. Tom smiles. “Wick” was the word the abbot used – the old Yorkshire term for something ardently, joyously alive. Like the wick green shoots of the first plants of spring, thrusting through the covering of snow. “Wick”. Much as Tom loved Abbot John’s predecessor, Father Peregrine, he acknowledges the pleasure and surprise in hearing the simple Yorkshire vernacular in his new abbot’s homilies. And he realizes that his instinct to qualify that, with the insistence that nothing could come anywhere near equalling Father Peregrine’s teaching or example, is acquiring the slightly faded look of an obstinate response that has had too long a time in the sun.
A curious thing, the loyalties and loves among the brethren, the ties of community. Most essential that they should exercise restraint in this intimate, shoulder-to-shoulder pilgrimage of simplicity. That they lift each other up, bear one another’s burdens – to the extent that seems realistically possible – but that each man takes responsibility for a degree of reticence. A living soul has about it a certain solitude. The way of a monk – however vulnerable, however gentle, however loving the man might be – accepts no other conjoining than with the risen Christ. No easy discipline, this. So tempting, at times, to take refuge in something less.
Then he thinks: bearing one another’s burdens? Is that even possible? How could you? Give a man a hug when he’s feeling wretched, maybe, but bear his burden? What does that mean?
As he rides over the turf cropped short by rabbits and sheep, between these massy outcrops of rocks sprouting thorn trees and little, hard-leaved shrubs, it occurs to Brother Tom that maybe bearing one another’s burdens is something to do with being willing to live with the consequences of their ordinary human frailty – the dim-wittedness, the awful table manners, the frightful singing out of tune. And making space for them; overlooking it with kindness. Because everybody needs to be accepted. Even the clumsiest idiot needs to belong.