Abbot John comes through into the kitchen when the midday meal is well concluded. He finds, as he hoped, Brother Conradus just finishing up. The servers have gone. Brother Richard has dealt with the ale and water jugs. The remnants of butter are scraped back into the big dish ready to take through to the dairy, and what is left of the bread is wrapped in big linen bags to eat later. There’s never any leftover cheese to sort out. As much as he gives them, they eat.
“Thank you, Brother,” says the abbot, “for another wonderful meal. It’s a spiritual thing, your cooking. I don’t believe I ever really thought about it before, but with the delicious food you prepare, you also serve up cheerfulness and wellbeing. You’ve improved the temper of the whole community. You’ve taken the level of contentment here up by several notches. I am so grateful.”
Brother Conradus stands and listens to this, drying his hands on a blue and white cloth, his dark eyes shining with happy appreciation. He loves his abbot, loves the community, loves his work. Brother Conradus is a happy man.
“One thing,” says the abbot cautiously: but in a monastic community the antennae are sensitive and receptive; tension enters the kitchener’s body. Immediately anxious and on the alert, he waits to hear what his abbot has to say. What’s he done wrong?
“That wonderful rice pudding you made us, Brother; it was so nice. The kind of thing I could go on eating all day. But I think – if I’m not mistaken – we had saffron in it. I’m just wondering if saffron isn’t beyond the bounds of proper frugality.”
He doesn’t want to upset his kitchener. Lord knows what they’d do without him now. Men don’t take kindly to criticism. But he knows he has to take this up.
To his relief, Brother Conradus’s rosy, chubby face breaks into a big grin, his eyes dancing with delight.
“Saffron? Did you think so? Good! I wasn’t quite sure if it would pass. Father, I wouldn’t dream of using saffron; it costs an arm and a leg. Just every now and then we have some as a gift, and that’s lovely, but I wouldn’t ask Brother Cormac to get it in specially. Lady Agnes brought me some back from Cheppinge Walden when she’d been to Cambridge; it was superb, but it’s all gone now. We used it for Hannah and Gervase, for their wedding feast. What we had in the rice pudding today was marigold petals. Brother Walafrid has been drying them for me. They don’t taste the same of course, but to be honest it doesn’t matter that much. The flavour of saffron is so delicate most people don’t even know they’ve had it – which is a pity when it costs all that money. So I put honey and nutmeg in, and a little rosewater. The marigold petals serve to give it that lovely colour – and make people feel they’ve been given something special, which is always nice. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
The abbot gives silent thanks for this sensible, resourceful, creative man; that God sent him to no other abbey than this. It is a blessing.
“Thank you,” he says. “I’m sorry to be so nit-picking.”
“No, no!” Conradus shakes his head emphatically. “It’s part of your oversight of us, Father. To see to it that we are frugal and responsible, that we live in humility and simplicity. It’s part of your care of our souls.”
John nods. “That’s exactly right,” he says. “But thank you for understanding. One other thing – I wonder, can I ask you to set aside two portions of something quite hearty? Brother Tom has gone on an errand for me today, and he may come in quite late; but you know him, he’s bound to be hungry.”
“With pleasure – yes, I’ll put him something by. I’ll see what I can do. We’re a bit short on poultry and cheese just now, but there’ll be bread aplenty and lots of fruit.”
“Short on poultry and cheese?” says the abbot. “Why?”
“Oh…” Brother Conradus waves his hand vaguely in the monastic evasion John instantly recognizes as protecting someone else. “I think perhaps Brother Cormac felt we were getting through too much. I can be a bit lavish, overdo things at times.”
The abbot frowns. “What? I don’t think so. There’s been nothing excessive.”
“Oh… well…” He seems disinclined to pursue this, so John thinks he’d do better to leave it, take it up with Brother Cormac. “Anyway, Father, I’ll be sure to look out something tasty and filling for Brother Thomas. I’ll find something for him to enjoy. But two portions, you said. The other is for –?”
“For Brother Cedd.” Before he can stop it, an entirely involuntary sigh escapes the abbot, and he sees in the kitchener’s eyes that Brother Conradus has read the sadness stealing into his face. He wonders whether to say any more or not. Conradus waits respectfully, doesn’t ask – knows he must not.
“I don’t know if he will come back.” John thinks this much he can say. “But if he does… I’d just like him to know we care about him. I’d like him to feel wanted – to know he’s welcome.”
Silence opens up between them like a pool. The helplessness of love that has no power to intervene, can only wait. Conradus understands.
“I’ll be making bread this afternoon,” he says. “And all the while I’m kneading the bread, I will pray for Brother Cedd. Our Lady – she lost Jesus, didn’t she? She had to go back and look for him when he went missing. She looked for him everywhere, and when she found him, he was in the Father’s house. This afternoon I will remind her about it. Our Lady is wise. She is good at looking for people who have lost their way. She doesn’t give up. I will ask Our Lady.”
There is such kindness in his voice, and with it such confidence, that John feels comforted. Perhaps, in the end, everything will be all right. He lingers, drawing strength from the steady, cheerful faith of his kitchener; but he has nothing more to discuss, and the silence is lengthening. Conradus probably has other things to do. So, “Thank you,” he says, and turns to go. He takes in, without consciously noticing it, that Conradus’s apron is clean. This soothes John’s soul. The abbot believes in cleanliness. He doesn’t know how it contributes to health, but he instinctively senses a link. His own standards of cleanliness for a kitchen apron varied a lot from Brother Cormac’s. Brother Conradus washes everything – a world away from the perfunctory swipe with an already filthy towel Brother Cormac thought would do.
Between Conradus and Our Lady, the place is in good hands. If he thought about it, it would not surprise him to know that the first person Conradus commits into Christ’s kindly keeping, as he watches his abbot go treading quietly out of the kitchen, is John himself.
“Ah, best of shepherds,” the kitchener murmurs, as he finds the tape sewn onto the corner of the blue and white cloth, hanging it up tidily on the nail where it belongs, “you know what it is to feel the tug of loss when one sheep strays. Does not your heart follow after, wondering about brambles and ditches and vicious traps? Did you not break your heart for Judas, when he kissed you goodbye? Our Abbot John, dearest shepherd, he has gone through a lot this last year or two. Comfort his heart, give him faith and hope. Let him keep his flock entire. Bring this one home.” He takes off his apron and hangs it on its hook behind the door. He casts a final glance round the kitchen, to make sure he has left nothing undone. Oh, yes. The birds.
On the table, apart from the bread saved for later, stands a bowl of scraps. These are not the ones for the midden, to rot down into good loam for the vegetable garden. In this bowl are a very few pared cheese rinds, some cut apple cores, apple skins pared away by the older brothers whose teeth are not so good, fragments of torn buttered bread left behind on the plates of one or two.
When Brother Cormac passed the care of the kitchen into Brother Conradus’s hands, he didn’t say much. Conradus, who is no fool, knew this did not result from indifference but from heartache. It cost Cormac dear, that act of obedience, turning away from the work where he felt at home, connected up to times past; especially since he was asked to shoulder, instead, the burden of a difficult area of responsibility. The work of the cellarer is tough and complicated, and Conradus doesn’t envy him one bit. What Brother Cormac did say, that day he took off his filthy apron and tossed it with every appearance of utter carelessness into the laundry pile, was, “You won’t forget to feed the birds, will you? They rely on it. And there are some mice underneath the woodpile. And the fox, he comes to the door at dusk.”
Brother Conradus has his own opinions about feeding the mice, and was not astonished to discover how persistently they hang around the frater, despite the best efforts of the cat. No wonder, if Brother Cormac has been feeding them. Come inside, why not? Same man, nicer weather. He feels undecided about the fox. Will feeding it kitchen scraps save a few lives in the hen coop? Or simply encourage an extended family of hangers-on? He knew a householder who went in for hens in a big way, thought he would make a fortune selling eggs in the market, only to have thirteen foxes – thirteen! – move in, setting up house in a ring all around the farmstead. At a discreet distance. But not too far off, either. So Conradus has mixed feelings about feeding foxes. He remembers that.
He’s willing to feed the birds though, trained as they are, by Brother Cormac over sixteen years, to expect the men in black to keep it coming. He carries the bowl out into the yard, where a hopeful Benedictine crow knows the hour of the day and sits waiting on the ridge of the small roof sheltering the well from falling birdlime.
Looking across at the watchful crow, chirruping to it in a friendly way as he broadcasts the scraps he’s brought out, Conradus thinks of Jesus saying, “Semper pauperes habetis vobiscum.”13
Too true! A magpie lands on the jutting corner of the building, flicking its tail and scoping out the breadcrumb situation. Two sparrows come fluttering down, completely unafraid. No wonder. It would be entirely understandable if they mistook him and Cormac for their mothers.
Then a new thought enters his mind, surprising him. That thing Jesus said – “semper pauperes habetis vobiscum me autem non semper habetis” – the poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me… he said it in response to his indignant disciples complaining about that woman who used up her expensive perfume anointing Christ’s feet. They grumbled about it – jealous probably – and said she could have raised a lot of money to feed the poor if she’d sold it. So the point Jesus made was that some things were just for the everyday routine – but the chance to touch him was special and not to be missed. What Father Theodore, in Conradus’s novitiate days, would have identified as the difference between chronos – time that is normal and just goes on and on – and kairos, the moment of opportunity that shines out from among all the other moments, saying “Now!” Though he treasures his full profession as a monk, Conradus misses those mornings in the teaching circle in the upstairs room with Father Theodore. Even the difficult Greek, and learning new pieces of music.
But as to this business of having the poor always with you, but not always having Jesus, he thinks, it’s tricky though, isn’t it? Because, when it comes to the sheep and the goats – or Dives and Lazarus, for that matter – Jesus identifies himself with the poor! “Quamdiu fecistis uni de his fratribus meis minimis mihi fecistis.”14 So, just as you might miss the kairos in the general muddle and jumble of the ongoing stream of chronos, you might overlook the Christ in the ever-present rabble of the insatiable poor. Because, when it comes down to it, perhaps it isn’t as easy as you thought at first to tell the difference.
Here Brother Conradus pauses, checks himself, as his conscience intervenes with a footnote to the effect that “ever-present rabble” and “insatiable” betray a derogatory and disrespectful estimation of Christ’s poor. For was not the Lord himself a poor man – poorer even than these birds, seeing they have their nests, but he had nowhere to lay his head. “Mea culpa,” murmurs Conradus in penitence; then he hesitates. He’s supposed to strike his breast, but he’s got butter on his hand now, and doesn’t want to transfer it to his scapular. He wishes he’d kept his apron on. He wonders if it will be all right to do it later, but knows he’ll forget; so he strikes the air just adjacent to where his breast-bone lurks hidden beneath his robes and his own natural padding, and hopes that will do.
He stands to watch the birds chattering and squabbling over the scraps he’s thrown, then takes the bowl back into the kitchen. He pours a little water into it, distressed at the bad job he makes of washing both his hands and the bowl, given that both are greasy and the water’s cold. So he fetches the blue and white cloth, wiping the bowl and his hands and the water jug handle free of butter. He goes to hang the cloth up again, decides his ways are getting perilously similar to Cormac’s, and tosses it instead on the laundry pile, where his apron should have been too, by rights. Oh, bother it, the apron will do until the day ends; let it stay where it is just for now.
But what about the poor? And the birds? The fox? What about Brother Cedd? Is he, as it turns out, not the poor that will always be there, waiting for crumbs of love left over and flung his way, but the Christ himself, only briefly among them? Has he gone? Have they missed Jesus? Or is his soul still poor and hungry? Will he come back, begging for forgiveness, for understanding, for another chance?
Brother Conradus determines that if, in the trickling out of the day, the chronos flow of barely distinguishable moments, a sparkle of light picks out the kairos in amongst them, he will be ready. He walks along the cloister, thinking about it… the Benedictine crow, waiting humbly to be remembered… Brother Cormac begging him not to forget the wild birds who depend on them… his abbot, asking him to set aside a portion of something hearty… Christ’s poor… Christ himself in humility among them… and Brother Cedd.