In sending Godric to Leckbourne, his father had presumably hoped to launch him on such a career. Even now Godric’s teachers believed he had a dazzling future in the Church.
He could conceive of no occupation meeting the Abbot’s approval that would glorify God. The work of a parish priest like Father Pickard had the potential to do so; but Godric did not dare suggest that course for himself.
His difficulties had begun in boyhood, with his first reading of St Matthew. In Judea, Christ had told an enquirer: “If you will be perfect, go and sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”
To Godric then, as now, this seemed a basic requirement for a Christian – that is, for one who honestly professed himself a follower of Christ.
To be sure, it was a counsel of perfection, but how could any Christian institution, still less one that claimed to train preachers, seek to amass worldly riches? What business did Leckbourne have in operating a hostelry from which the poor were turned away? What business did it have in charging inflated fees for imparting Christ’s word to the young, or for treating the sick, or for hiring itself out to pray for the souls of unrepentant but wealthy sinners? How could it spend as much as it did on gold candlesticks, obscure books, idolatrous effigies, and all the other rubbish that cluttered its vaults?
The physical setting of the Abbey was in itself an affront to the Benedictine vow of poverty. The grounds, a place of sublime beauty, were ornamented by a lake which had been enlarged and landscaped by the monks and lay brothers, and by serfs from its manor: slaves, in other words. To improve further on God’s work the various abbots had diverted the river, built weirs and waterfalls and even an artificial hill. Tens of thousands of marks had been squandered on the lawns and arboretum, the church, the chapter house, the cloister, and the Abbot’s quarters, which for luxury were inferior, in this diocese, only to the Bishop’s Palace. The infirmary with its separate cloister, the dortours and refectory, the library and school: these were architecturally equal or superior to almost anything owned by the King.
The routine of the Abbey was centred on the opus Dei, the set of seven daily services which began at half-past two in the morning, with lauds, and ended at half-past seven in the evening with compline. The voices of the monks rose from the chancel to fill the church with anthems and responsories, psalms, prayers. The sacred sound radiated from the roof, the walls, and the high traceries of the west front: hypnotic, magical, calming the air, investing the whole Abbey with a sense of spirituality and peace.
When he had first arrived, Godric had found it exceedingly beautiful. Now he thought otherwise. The novices and students, like Godric himself, were themselves expected to observe much of this barren ritual. Instead of providing a tool for meditation and an environment for contemplation, the chanting was little more than a waste of time. There was even rivalry among the brothers as to who sang most piously. The hours spent in the choir, Godric felt, would be better used in practical pursuit of heaven, among the destitute.
There were other, more serious, reasons why he hated the Abbey. Its hypocrisies were legion and disgusting. For the past five years he had been sustained by the lure of four days every month away from there, at home, with a blissful fortnight at Christmas and Easter.
Last Christmas had been anything but blissful, and during his January visit Godric had been more troubled still. He had dreaded coming back this time. Having arrived late in the afternoon, he had washed himself and changed his clothes, spoken to his parents, taken a bite of food; and had then been unable to put off any longer the hour when he was again alone with his sister.
She had asked him to her room, the site of so much soul-searching at Christmas. There, cross-legged on her bed, she had just explained why she thought she was expecting Ralf’s child.
Most of the room was lost in shadow. She alone was illuminated.
Godric was sitting with his back to the drapes, in the upholstered chair, looking across the rosy expanse of counterpane. Eloise was in partial profile. Lit by the oil-lamp on her bedside table and dressed in a voluminous, willow-green robe which only emphasized the pallor of her features, she seemed in the horror of her disclosure already to have abandoned the struggle for life. Just like her brother, she was damned. The place she too had arrived at bore no relation to the warm, living world of human beings.
The worst, the very worst, had happened to her, to Ralf, to both families. Godric had foreseen the possibility. He had never expected it to become real.
He knew little about women and their bodies. It took him a moment to see a further implication. At Christmas she had given him to understand that, following his warning in November, the affair had immediately ended.
She had lied. At a stroke she had undone his trust. She had negated all the hours he had spent with her after Imogen’s death.
She and Ralf had continued into December. Fornicating. In the workshop, if she were to be believed. Like two serfs, ignorant, immoral, too stupid or depraved to heed the consequences.
Godric’s last communication with Ralf had been by letter, telling him that his wish to use the Abbey’s library could not be granted. Something in the wording of Ralf’s request had struck him as unpleasant, revealing what Godric now saw as a persistence verging on the aggressive. It was of a piece with Ralf’s pursuit of Eloise. The same trait had been visible in the way the mill had risen, and was rising again; and in the way he had refused to stop tugging and tugging on that leather strap until the prisoner had come free from his slime.
Godric suddenly thought of Bartholomew, down by the boat-house, on a golden June evening when swarms of gnats had danced over the water. The two of them had been quite alone there, out of sight of the Abbey windows.
He shut his eyes, trying to force the memory of his humiliation away. Nothing had happened, except a misunderstanding, but that had been enough to make the matter overt.
He had agonized so much, spent so long in mental self-flagellation, that he was no longer even sure when an awareness of his deformity had begun. Had it been present, even before he had become aware? At his first meeting with Ralf, what had been the nature of the attraction he had felt? How pure had it been? Looking up from the mud, what sort of saviour had he beheld? Well favoured, strong, unabashedly masculine. Better, far better, if the attempt had foundered; if the miscreated wretch had been extinguished, submerged, concealed for ever by the incoming tide!
Godric had always told himself that he had not been conscious of his leanings till his arrival at the Abbey, and then not for several months. To begin with he had not understood, or wanted to understand, what some of the boys did with each other. Later he learned that their vice was not confined to the school. The Abbot plainly knew about it, knew what some of his monks got up to, among themselves and even with those boys who did not resist. He had allowed a Sodom be made of his abbey.
Godric had studied and studied again certain passages in the Bible: Leviticus chapter eighteen, verse twenty-two; Leviticus chapter twenty, verse thirteen; Paul’s Epistle to the Romans chapter one, verse twenty-seven; and, above all, chapters eighteen and nineteen of Genesis. But neither fire nor brimstone fell on Leckbourne. It continued to prosper. All that descended on it were fresh recruits, money, and an occasional visit from William of Briouze.
Godric reminded himself that this conversation was not about his worries, but his sister’s. He asked, “What will you do?”
In a small voice she said, “There are ways and ways.”
“Of what?”
“Getting rid of it. The village women know. Herbs. Groundsel, I think, and tansy. Or spurred rye. Ergot. I’m surprised Mary didn’t take some.”
“Mary Ibbott?”
“I even thought of asking her.”
Impossibly, the horror of the interview was getting worse.
“You see,” she went on, “if I have the baby, Ralf won’t stand any chance at all.”
There was no sen
se in her speech, only the logic of a nightmare. “You can’t do that, kill a child, I mean. You can’t take a life.” The whole thing was so monstrous and repugnant that he could not believe they were even discussing it. What had she endured, in the weeks since her bleeding had stopped? What depths of suffering had she plumbed? “Eloise.”
She turned her head slightly, to look at him full face.
“Promise me you won’t.”
“I only told you because I had to. If I hadn’t told someone I should have gone out of my mind. Perhaps I already have. You’re the only one I can talk to. It’s like a confession, isn’t it?”
“I’m not a priest.”
“You soon will be.”
“I may never be ordained.”
There: he had said it, given form to the idea which until now he had hardly admitted had been growing like a tumour inside him.
She said, “What makes you say that?”
He could simply pretend that the remark had been meant as a generalization about the uncertainty of the future, anyone’s future, but that would be mendacious. To the same enquirer, Christ had said: “You shall not bear false witness.” Mendacity was what Godric himself had just been deploring in his sister. It was human enough. But to be perfect, to follow Christ, one had to rise above it.
And yet, to explain himself, he would have to tell her everything. He would have to tell her about the corruption of the regular Church, its venality and lust for power, its departure from the way of Christ. He would have to tell her about simony, about the misappropriation of tithes and lands and bequests. And he would have to tell her about Bartholomew and the school dortour; and, above all, about his commingled feelings for Ralf, diseased by denial and self disgust.
To speak truly, as Christ commanded, he would have to explain all these things. For how otherwise could he seek any promises from her?
“What makes you say that?”
Her words were like the blows of an axe. Each one smote the hinges of the gate which he had kept locked fast. He had cowered behind it for years. A few ragged fibres of wood were all that remained to hold it in place. With one slight push, the gate would open and leave him exposed.
“Godric, are you all right?”
“No,” he said, and began his explanation.
* * *
On the eve of Godric’s last day, Eloise experienced, as if by miracle, the pains in her lower back which always presaged menstruation. In the early hours of the morning she started to bleed. So great were her relief and joy that she wanted to wake Godric and tell him.
Since his confession three nights ago, she had ceased to pray for herself. She had prayed for him instead. The practices he had described should have revolted her, but she could see them only as sterile and pitiable. Living as he did in that place, Godric’s struggles were nothing short of superhuman.
She better understood now the nature of his friendship with Ralf. There was something pathetic in that too, a love like Imogen’s, which could never be requited. She understood Godric’s behaviour last June, in the stable yard and on the dike; she understood the motives that had brought her and Ralf together.
Godric had confided in her, just as she had confided in him. A year ago, she would never have believed she could be so close to her brother. In that respect she had envied Imogen, about whom she had been thinking more and more.
There had been a bigger obstacle to Imogen’s love for Godric than the Church. Did she now understand, wherever she was, how naive, how pathetically endearing, her earthbound devotion had been? And was she, resplendent, gazing down from her celestial vantage, able at this moment to see into Eloise’s heart?
Looking back, it seemed to Eloise that Imogen had been one of the people she had known before, in that other existence. Was that why they had become so intimate, so quickly: had they already been friends? During the first shock of her death, Eloise had experienced further glimpses, had felt rather than seen fragments of an existence both familiar and strange.
Pine trees figured in it, and rocky cliffs, perhaps fringed with sand. Long ships, a grey sea, fire; shouting, violence, blood. Godric may have been there, with or without Imogen, married or related to her. Eloise did not know. Ralf was the only certainty. He had been her husband, and something had parted them.
In the workshop, she had told him about her earlier visions, expecting him to be sceptical, or even critical of her deviation from Christian doctrine; and had been amazed to find that he himself felt something similar, though less strongly. From the first he had sensed that he and Godric might have known each other in a previous life, and later had convinced himself that he had known her too.
On some days Eloise did not think about these matters at all. On others they obsessed her. She tried to remember every particle of her dreams, sifting through the dross for any clue, but the memories came to her only when awake or half awake, and only then in times of great unhappiness.
Ralf had persuaded her she was not mad. She had learned that his own, unorthodox faith could easily accommodate the transmigration of souls.
She ached to be with him. If they were not to be together in this lifetime, why had they been allowed to recognize each other? Would there be a third chance, in another life, to resolve whatever was unfinished? Or was this the end?
That had been the chief subject of her prayers, her request for another chance, even though, according to the Bible, there could no such thing. And she had begged for the baby not to be, not yet. In that she had been selfish. Her request had been ignored. It was only when she had forgotten about herself, and concentrated all her prayers on her poor, suffering brother, that God had been moved to act.
There was no chance to give Godric the glad tidings before breakfast, because he was the last to the table.
When the family were alone, they seldom took breakfast in the great hall, which at this time of day could be cold. A round folding table was set up in the dayroom. Spread with a cream linen cloth and lit by four squat bronze candlesticks, it was already laden with food: cheese of various kinds, sliced ham and sausage, spiced eggs, smoked herring and mackerel, hot bread, milk, clabber and butter. Elisabeth had just brought a second jug of lemon tea.
Late last night, it seemed, Eloise’s father had received a letter from London about the mill. Attached had been some documents in very complicated Latin. Rather than disturb his clerk, he had given them to Godric to scrutinize.
Godric had brought the parchments in with him. He waited till the maid left before he told his father, “Your reading is correct, sir. The Molarius is not using the church courts. He has obtained a writ from the chancery addressed to the Sheriff of Sussex. Mr Chevalley says this will lead to a de postero plaint, lodged at the Court of Common Pleas. He thinks the case might end up at the King’s Bench, where it would be heard coram rege. By His Grace in person.”
“But there is no case. There can be no case.”
“So Mr Chevalley says.” With a wandering forefinger Godric examined the letter, holding it towards the nearest candle-flame. “Where are we? Here it is. ‘A tide mill has no stream. “Rivus qui molam agit”: this is the crucial definition.’”
Aunt Béatrice asked him, “What does it mean?”
“Literally, ‘a stream which drives a mill’. ‘Rivus’, a stream, ‘mola’, a millstone or the mill itself, ‘agito’, I put in motion. A watermill must have a millstream in order to qualify as a molendinium sacrum.”
“A what?”
“A mill driven by the wind or rain, which are held to be sacred. Only the Church can license one. Because it is driven by the tide and has no millstream, we say ours falls outside the definition. It must therefore be a molendinium profanum, an ordinary mill. That is the top and tail of the dispute.”
Eloise was studying her father. In his eyes she saw the same expression she had seen on Christmas morning when news of the flood had reached him. Her knowledge of litigation was limited to one fact – it cost a great deal of money.
“Perhaps they’re not serious,” said Aunt Mildred, which struck Eloise, but apparently not her father, as unlikely.
“It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve tried to frighten me,” he said. “They’ve got no case and they know it.” He snorted. “And even if it did go before His Grace, do they really imagine he’d find for them, against the baronage?”
It all sounded grave to Eloise. The Church was not known for its incompetence. She looked at Godric who, perhaps of the same mind as herself, was reluctant to say anything.
She asked, “What will be the next step, Papa?
“Another summons. Depending how it’s worded, I may have to appear in person next time, with a lawyer. Then there’ll be a lot of arguing, followed by more writs, and summonses to various courts, until the thing ends up wherever it ends up. Before the King, perhaps, as Mr Chevalley seems to think.” He helped himself to another herring. “Not that it’ll get that far.”
“What about the costs?” said Eloise’s mother. “Who will pay?”
“The Diocese, since they haven’t a hope of winning.” He gestured at the parchments. “They’ve already let themselves in for that little exercise. Mr Chevalley’s services aren’t cheap. It’s just as well Bishop William has deep pockets.”
9
The lawsuit was an enigma. Gervase twice went to Chevalley’s rooms to discuss it. Chevalley said the plaint was a spoiling tactic, meant to dissuade others from building similar mills before Rome was able to change the definitions. The plaint had probably also been intended, as Gervase himself had guessed, to make him capitulate; the lawyer repeatedly assured his client that there was no reason why he should. He had analysed the meaning of every word, not only of the definitions, but also of their subordinate clauses. His conclusion was iron-clad. A molendinium aquaticum required a millstream.
The Tide Mill Page 35