The sun slides low in the west, bathing in a sky of vermilion, turquoise, gold, and dusky lavender. Time inches down into shadow. Mystery lengthens beneath the trees and gathers in the corners of the yard at Caldbeck, between the barn and the goatshed, between the stable and the house, in the well with its coolness and silence, under the henhouse. Rooks call from tall branches, and every now and then the voice of a sheep carries across the valley, and is answered by another. Crickets sing, still, in the grass.
Having seen his guests on their way, William turns his attention to the evening chores, alone with his thoughts. He prefers it that way. If Madeleine helps him, he has to choose between getting the jobs done methodically, nothing overlooked, and remembering the courtesies that maintain domestic harmony. He loves his wife and is glad of the life he has chosen; Caldbeck feels like home now, like a protective fleece drawn close about him against the uncompromising, difficult realities of life – the people and places he must avoid, the background pulse of threat and hostility. Much of his own making, he acknowledges freely, but it chafes his soul raw at times.
The fox will be about before sundown, stealthily opportunistic – much like himself, thinks William. So the hens must be shut in first. He checks. Yes, they are roosting; numbers up to six again. They lost all but two to the fox at the end of the winter, but neighbours have been willing to trade pullets for butter and cheese – not fruit, they had plenty of their own. So now there are six, brown and white and speckled, eyes drowsing, combs flopping, heads tucked down into fluffed feathers, in the gloom of the roost. He closes and bolts the door, and the little pop-hole door for their own use.
He fetches from the scullery a can for goat’s milk, a larger pail for cow’s milk, and a washing pail and cloth. In the quiet of evening the turning of the handle, to draw up water from the well, rattles loud.
Fetching in the goat is a patient, tedious business. She thinks it’s a game. Happily she’s also greedy, and the lure of oats shaken in her basin proves irresistible. Every evening he does this – taking the bowl into the furthest corner of her well-strawed stall, pretending to be entirely absorbed with some detail of the hay net until curiosity overcomes her and she approaches closer… closer… to look, while he ignores her. Finally, as her slotted eyes are peering past him and her pink nose is right against his hip, quick as lightning he grabs her collar. Some evenings she is even faster and makes a break for freedom so that he has to start all over again; but tonight he is successful, and glad of that because he’s tired.
One hand holding her collar, the other holding the bowl of oats out of reach, he leads her to the milking stand. She hops up, twisting round to see the oats; he fastens her securely, gives the clean, pink udder a cursory wipe with the cloth, and lets her have the supper she’s waiting for.
She knows him well, and lets her milk down easy for him; it flows plentifully into the can, not far from the top once she’s all stripped out. He leaves her tied up while he takes the can into the scullery; he’s lost too many pots of milk letting the goat get down first.
Then he comes back and unties her, settles her into her stall, sees to it she has hay and water for the night, scratches her bony forehead in the place she likes, pats her neck, crooning to her the endearments that make a goat happy.
He shuts her in until the morning and goes in search of their cow. This is a beast with a sense of humour. He knows what will happen; it’s a new trick she has.
She’ll be waiting for him out on the common, and come towards him as he goes to meet her, calling. He’ll begin to drive her homeward, leisurely along the track, watching the stolid planting of her cloven hooves spreading under her impressive weight, marvelling at the dainty grace of her ankles, enjoying the sway of her belly and the rhythm of her walk. And then, at a particular point along the path, she’ll dance sideways, cantering wildly down the bank, udder swinging, head tossing. What is she like, this cow? He has to follow her down, call her again, until at last she’s had enough of it, consenting as the shadows lengthen and the air breathes a chill, to come into the cowshed and her milking stall.
He never ties her. She munches on the grain and the gathered comfrey he has for her, while he sits, head pressed in the hollow between her round belly and her sloping flank, squatting on the low milking stool, giving himself to the firmer, pulling rhythm of milking a cow. She, too, has established a bond with him, and her milk flows comfortably at his touch. He sets about it, giving her no time to get bored. If it takes too long, she’ll just plant one foot firmly in the pail, swing about and walk off. He really doesn’t know why he never bothers to tie her, racing against her boredom to finish up; that’s just how it is.
And then, the milking done, the two pails left in the scullery where Madeleine will strain the milk through a cheesecloth into clean bowls for the cream to rise, he goes to find a heel of bread, tears it into a bowl and adds a slop of milk, then goes back outside. He closes the house door behind him, and sets out in the dusk to walk the bounds of their homestead, check all is well, and set his little supper out for the vixen.
As he saunters quietly through the gathering dusk, he thinks of the day gone, wonders if Brother Tom and Brother Cedd are nearly home, and what reception the novice will find with his abbot. Go gently with him, John, he thinks; God knows, we’re all confused, all lose our way.
He revisits his own conversation with Brother Cedd in the apple loft, and feels ashamed he couldn’t do it any better; that he has so little warmth, such a horror of personal involvement. He didn’t like the mention of his helpless tears, didn’t want to have to recall those times of such strain and turmoil. He wonders what life will hold for Brother Cedd, knotted up inside and hungry for affirmation – afflictions of youth.
He thinks of his own life, so many years using the monastic system to obtain some measure of sanctuary and peace after a rocky beginning to his years on earth. Why did God do that? he wonders. What possible good purpose could there be in it, for him or for me, to put me through a childhood of such unremitting wretched misery? What was it for? Then he wonders if perhaps it had no design to it at all, it just fell out that way, for him to make the best of it he could, crawl out of it into the lap of grace.
He pauses, looking up the wooded hillside at the now black silhouette of the treetops against the last light in the west. The evening star is shining, very bright.
He thinks about the contrasts in his life, and admits the truth of it, that he began this marriage too old; he will always be a monk who got married, neither one thing nor another. Not that he ever was; for he never felt any kind of call before he fell in love. Perhaps he was born to belong nowhere, to be neither one kind of man nor another, just a feral soul set loose on earth as isolated and separate as that star.
And now he wonders what happens when you die. He sifts through the teaching of the church that has saints organized into serried ranks wearing crowns and white robes, shouting hosanna in a glittering city where night never falls and the praise never ends and nobody falls asleep any more. Where the relief of tears and the comfort of making love, the smell of night-scented stocks and the peace of watching the stars through the window as you fall asleep, is all over. Only the loud hosannas and the crystal city, or the exquisite inescapable agony of endless fire.
What a choice, eh? What a God. He wonders which fate will be his, and how a man could possibly tell. He thinks of the Gospel stories, of the separation of sheep from goat, so indistinguishable that even they are surprised to discover which breed they’ve been all along.
He thinks of the criteria. I was naked and you clothed me, sick and in prison and you visited me, hungry and you fed me; and he concludes that his future destiny is looking bleak.
He wonders how much of it you have to do. If there were ten sick men and you visited five, would you go to heaven for the five you visited or to hell for the five you ignored? Did it matter which way round it was – which you did most recently?
He looks up at the evening star, feels the cool of the night wind against his face and neck, then he closes his eyes. “Jesus… oh Jesus…” he whispers; “save me from myself. Save me from the weariness and confusion that dogs me always. Save me from cynicism, save me from despair. Set out of reach my tendency for cruelty. Set far from me the coldness that seizes my heart. Help me to keep my feet in the way of faith. Cling to me, Lord Jesus, for I have neither the strength nor the intelligence to cling to thee. Oh Christ, I beg thee, do not let me go. Do not let me fall into darkness. Do not let me be lost entirely. Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.”
He thinks he might cry if he stays here any longer, probing his chronic dread and distrust of life, so he finishes his prowling of the perimeter of his home, ending up by the walled vegetable garden, coming along the path dividing the orderly beds out through the arch into the flagged front yard.
Now night is deepening, and one by one across the darkening sky, the stars are coming out. He thinks Brother Tom and Brother Cedd will be safe home by now. It must be not far off time for Compline. In these last weeks before Michaelmas, they’ll still be on summer timing. Compline will begin in darkness at eight o’clock, until they change to the winter ordering of things, bringing the day’s last Office forward to a quarter past six.
He thinks of their life, shaped as regularly as breathing by the rhythm of prayer, the calm chanting of canticles and psalms, work quietly and mindfully undertaken, the study of Scripture and teachings of Holy Church, the mysteries of the sacred Eucharist and the prayers of the rosary. He wonders if they are, sort of, starting heaven in advance.
And then he begins to wonder again what happens when you die; if maybe after all it is only an ending, cessation. To his surprise, this provokes no fear in him; he doesn’t care. He feels at peace with leaving such matters in the hands of God. One thing he fears now – well, apart from being some day tracked down by the ecclesiastical courts, tortured, and hanged for his sin in attempting suicide when utter despair overwhelmed him. Apart from that; one thing he fears only – that he will lose the way, let go of Christ’s hand, become a hard empty shell with the softness beaten and eaten out of him by the hard-beaked predators of night. “Jesus… ah, Jesus…” he says again, softly; “for thy love’s sake, do not let me go.”
He hears the click of the latch and his house door opens, candlelight spilling out in a quiet glow against enveloping dark. He moves towards his wife, standing silhouetted in the entryway, wondering where he is.
Whether or not there is holy purpose in his love, he can’t be sure; but he knows it has brought him alive; given him – as far as anything can give this to his scarred and twisted soul – a sense of belonging, a sense of home.