Chapter
Nine

Brother Richard has never mastered the art of eating with his mouth shut. Perhaps it belongs more to the cultured refinement of the ruling classes. It’s not so much that his mother never saw the need for so polished an accomplishment, more that her life had not encompassed the suggestion that anyone should try. Everybody eats with their mouth open, don’t they? How else would they demonstrate adequate appreciation for the hearty fare slapped in front of them by their mothers?

Meals are taken in silence in a Benedictine monastery. This reaches beyond prohibition of speaking to the best diminishment they can achieve of clatter and scrape. None of this beating the dish like a gong as your spoon scoops up the last of the pottage. The only sound should be the voice of the reader – Brother Germanus this week – fulfilling the quota of scriptural material that will take them through the whole Bible in a year, and adding to it whatever edifying texts the precentor has identified as appropriate.

Every man among them has been schooled with utmost diligence by his novice master to be watchful for what is required – to pass the butter, the salt, the ale jug, when his brother has need of it. If a brother is lost in some reverie of his own, a discreet “ahem” may alert him that someone is waiting; or maybe he will suddenly feel his neighbour’s foot covertly kicking his ankle. But his neighbour will not speak to him. They are in silence. If all else fails and the men adjacent prove relentlessly oblivious, there is the sign language of the silence, allowing an unobtrusive request to be made without disturbance.

As in the choir so in the frater – there is an order of seating. Father Francis sometimes thinks God must have it in for him, to have let it arise that he be allocated the place right next to Brother Richard. Self-contained, well-mannered, urbane, Francis considers his neighbour in everything, including the way he eats. In his own childhood, had he lapsed at table into habits like Brother Richard’s – or not even habits, make that a momentary lapse – his stepmother would have removed his food without comment, and fed it to the dog. By the time he reached adulthood, an ingrained abhorrence of lip-smacking and slurping took root. Unshakeable. Inescapable. He just hates it.

Brother Richard is not entirely unaware of this. He doesn’t realize of course that every time (in every meal of every passing day) that he breathes in his ale – and every spoonful of his pottage – with a long sucking slurp, the sound reverberates through every level of Francis’s being in an agonizing intensity of irritation. It would be beyond him to imagine the extent to which it’s possible for Francis to become focused in dread fascination on waiting for the inevitable smacking of the lips that accompanies approximately every third chomp of Richard’s masticating jaws.

Granted, Richard is doing (as he thinks) valiantly. About twelve years ago, on a bad day, unable to contain himself, silence or no, Francis muttered in muted ferocity to his neighbour, “Oh, for mercy’s sake, man! Can you not eat quietly?” This naturally drew Brother Richard’s attention to the existence of a problem which he believes he has scrupulously corrected ever since. So Brother Richard, for twelve years feeling somewhat criticized and concerned not to offend, has excoriated Francis’s soul at every meal they share. That’s a long time. Francis has never mentioned it again. He feels ashamed that he ever said anything in the first place. Neither of them forgets. They carry the incident inside them, each of them, as part of the textured fabric of their relationship. There is no resentment. Francis wishes he hadn’t given way to the grating on his nerves. Richard doesn’t find it easy to sit next to a man so touchy you can drive him to distraction when you aren’t even doing anything. From either side of an incomprehensible cultural divide, they each regard the mystery of the other. They continually patch the relationship with acts of kindness. In the absence of understanding, it’s the best they can do.

There’s nothing more Francis can say. There’s no point in bringing it up with Richard, who would only be hurt and bewildered, or with his abbot, who could only laugh in sympathy and encourage him to be tolerant. This is what it means to take your way together.

In a fair world or a different abbey, Francis would have been gratefully rescued from this situation the day he agreed to take on the obedience of prior. He would have relocated from his place in the refectory to sit with other senior monks at the abbot’s table. Unhappily for him, St Alcuin’s is the monastery he belongs to. Their refectory is long and thin in shape. They do have an abbot’s table, but there’s only room for the abbot sitting at it, since, in order to make serving practical, the long tables where the brothers sit need to be a sensible distance forward from the walls. In a community with a keener investment in precedence, the monks might have been seated in an order determined by status. But not here. The senior monks sit nearer the abbot’s table, true – but senior only in the sense that they entered first. The newer recruits end up nearer the door. Francis tries not to feel bitter about this circumstance born of the marriage of a leaning towards egalitarianism and a quirk of the architecture.

There are respites. Days when one or the other of them is serving or reading; the times – more frequent now Francis is prior – when he eats with the abbot in his house, or takes his place at the abbot’s table when John has to be absent from the frater. But not today.

Brother Conradus, hampered by a steadily increasing reluctance in the cellarer to buy in any fish or fowl or cheese beyond what they produce themselves, has done what he can to produce an appetizing, beautifully seasoned meal of beans in gravy. It tastes good, but the sucking and guzzling of Richard consuming wet legumes makes Francis shudder. Nothing interrupts it but when he pauses to inhale some beer. The prior tries to be grateful that at least the man eats fast. Oh, no. He wants seconds.

Brother Germanus ploughs on with the careful dissection of biblical material in the set commentary, but the harmless flow of his reading is not sufficiently incisive to distract Francis from the sounds at his elbow that rack his tortured soul into spasms of revulsion. Quietly, outwardly unmoved, his eyes lowered, he eats his own food, trying to console himself with the reflection that at least, sitting right next to Brother Richard, he doesn’t have to look at him.

The fruit is passed along. Francis chooses an apple, Richard takes three extremely ripe plums. It proves necessary to suck the disintegrating flesh from the stones and suck back the juice that escapes in quantities from his mouth. Give him a huge tube, thinks Francis. Macerate the fruit, and just let him suck the whole lot up in one continuous gulp. Then he reproaches himself for his sour and uncharitable attitude. He permits himself the indulgence of raising one elbow to the table as unobtrusively as he can, so his hand resting against the side of his face entirely obscures Richard from view.

Richard, replete, folds his napkin and tosses it down on the table with a cheery, playful air. He signals his satiation with a long, happy exhalation and a small burp. Then he occupies himself picking plum skin out of his teeth while he waits for everyone else to be ready. Francis sits motionless, his face disciplined into a pleasant half-smile.

The meal concluded, the abbot gives the sign and they rise from the long board. They clear their own pots as far as the table by the door. As the men filter through patiently, Francis and Colin reach the way out simultaneously. Instinctively courteous, Francis steps back, with a sketch of a bow and slight motion of his hand inviting Colin to pass. Richard, close behind, blunders into him and treads on his heel.

Francis is an affable, irenic soul, but if there’s one thing that gets to him as surely as noisy eating, it’s people standing too close to him – and he just hates it when someone treads on his heels. His endurance chafed to bleeding point already, annoyance flares inside him and he shuts his eyes. He quells the reaction instantly, hopes the postulant didn’t see. But of course he saw. Every man sees everything in community. With the possible exception, perhaps, of his own annoying habits.

Brother Tom stops in surprise. “Hello,” he says to Brother Cedd. “What brought you here?”

For a moment, puzzled, his mind tries to make this fit; but no circumstance presents itself to account for his abbot having sent both of them to the same place on the same day without telling either of them the other one was going too.

Then, taking in how extremely nervous – even frightened – the young man looks, and since the abbot would hardly be sending one of their novices abroad in the world unaccompanied, Tom reaches the accurate conclusion that nobody has sent Brother Cedd here at all. He is not on abbey business.

“His feet brought him here. Sit down, Brother,” says William, quietly; and they both do – Cedd subsiding anxiously onto his stool, Brother Tom with a smile of greeting in Madeleine’s direction, releasing the scared lad from his gaze to give him a bit of space.

“This is welcome!” Tom comments cheerfully, adding, “Oh, thank you!” as William pours him a mug of ale. “Your brother sends his greetings, Madeleine – and the grain in those sacks is wheat in one, oats in the other. Left un-milled so it keeps better. Weevils always find flour somehow. Father John’s given me permission to stay and make myself useful about the place so long as I’m back home for Compline. So I’m at your disposal.”

Madeleine beams at him happily. “I cannot tell you how timely this is,” she says. “The boots and the lovely warm clothes are a blessing, and the grains are a Godsend. But more than that, we are so grateful for your help. We’ve been busy picking apples and pears of course, but it does take a while to set them out carefully to store in the loft of the barn, so we’ve only picked as fast as we can pack away. William’s been out helping our neighbours with their harvesting most days this month. They’ve a new baby, so the wife’s lying in, which has left them shorthanded. We’re glad to do what we can, naturally, but it’s left me to gather and store most of our fruit myself – still, I’ve grumbled enough to make William wish he’d stayed home and helped me, of that I’m quite sure. Besides eaters and cookers, we do have quite a few cider apples, and I’ve a pile of those – along with the sweet apples that aren’t good enough to store – ready for scratting in the cider press when I get the time to do it, or some help. And then William said the scythe needs a repair and sharpening, and there’s a hole in the fence some beast has made, needs mending. So any help with any of that will be a blessing indeed.

“For myself, this afternoon I’m still picking the last of the beans. The haulm can come down next week; we’ll be all done by then. Once all that’s finished, one of us will have to go for some straw – both for bedding and thatching.”

William, listening quietly, shakes his head at this. “I can’t do the thatch, Madeleine, I’ve already told you. It’s skilled work. We’ll have to have some help with it. I think I’ll need to hire a man.”

Brother Tom detects the disciplined monastic humility in his tone, and thinks he looks a little overwhelmed. “I wish I could be here long enough to lend a hand with it,” he says. “Still we – me and Brother Cedd, here – we can push on with the apples, or maybe I can fix the fence while he starts the pomace in the press? Whatever would be most help. This cheese is tasty, Madeleine, and I’m enjoying your bread, too. Warm from the oven. Couldn’t be nicer!”

This time, he includes Brother Cedd in his glance as he looks across the table with a friendly grin; glad to see the young man fractionally relax. William sees it too, and very slightly nods as he meets Tom’s gaze, warmth in his eyes. “Thank you, Brother Thomas,” he says.

Tom directs his attention to the food in front of him, the fresh and fragrant bread, the golden butter still beaded with moisture, made today. There seems to be plenty of cheese, so he cuts another piece. “By heck, this goes down well! I don’t know what’s amiss with our supplies, but our cheese has been on shorter rations than usual these last few weeks. That’ll not be Brother Conradus’s doing if I know him – must be our new cellarer on a frugality drive. Mayhap you’ve been teaching him your ways.”

William looks at him thoughtfully. “I wonder why that is, then? He’s not had any advice from me about keeping men hungry. I drive a hard bargain, ’tis true, but I hope I’m not mean. Well, fill up here then – our cow came from St Alcuin’s, it’s the least we can do to let you have a bite of the cheese. Madeleine makes good ale and cider too, so drink up. And you, Brother Cedd – don’t be shy; just take what you want, don’t wait to be asked. We’re honoured to have you drop by.”

“What’s most useful for me to put my hand to, then, Brother?” Tom asks, still chewing. Appreciation gleams in William’s eyes; he treasures it that Tom thinks of him still as “brother”.

“I think the handle of my scythe is past repair,” he says. “I’ve bound it with twine, but it’s still dodgy. I expect I could figure out how to remove it and make a new one, but if you think you’re up to the task then I’ll wager you’ll make a better fist of it than I can. Would you be willing to take a look? Then maybe Cedd and I can take care of the apples.”

“That shouldn’t be too much trouble. Have you a lathe? Have you some seasoned bits of wood? Have you an anvil so I can peen the blade? Aye – good lad! You see – you’re all set up! Taking to homesteading like a duck to water!”

Madeleine, observing her husband, takes note of the gratitude in his face as Tom says this. He has tried so hard and had so much to learn.

“Oh, we’re all provided for,” she says. “William takes good care of us, thinks of everything. It brings me peace, you know? I’m in good hands. He’s a wise manager.”

Her husband listens to this with a degree of astonishment, but thinks better of the humorous impulse to look behind him for some other man. Madeleine is not over-free with her compliments, and easily irritated.

“Thank you!” he says. “That’s a plan, then. Well, if you’re done eating, I’ll show you where everything is.”