The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy

by Marsha Altman

  “Yes, Father. I know, Father.”

  “Your wealth is not your own, and so you testified in Bavaria and again here in Spain, and both times it was not true. Did you fail to understand the Rule, Brother Grégoire?”

  “No, Father. I was in error. I should not have done so.”

  “The Rule is not to be taken lightly, Brother,” he said, more insistently.

  “I know, Father.”

  “Did you not trust the church to manage its own wealth and give it appropriately to charity?” the bishop interrupted. “Do you believe the words of a heretic over the Vicar of Christ?”

  Each sentence seemed to fall like a blow on the monk before them. “Your Excellency, my brother—he is not a heretic.”

  “You said yourself he is a member of the Church of England, which denies the supremacy of Rome.”

  “That is true, and in our eyes, he is. But he does not believe he is, and he is my brother. I will not slander him.”

  “But by protecting him, you—”

  “Your Excellency,” Abbot Francesco interrupted. “This—Señor Darcy is not on trial here. His soul is not our concern. I will not ask Brother Grégoire to speak ill of his own family.”

  Grégoire glanced up with red eyes only briefly before bowing his head again.

  “You will write the banker in Madrid,” the bishop said, “and tell him to send the five thousand pounds to the abbot, who will distribute it himself.Then we will discuss the rest of your ‘inheritance.’”

  “Forgive me, Your Excellency, but I promised my brother I wouldn’t.”

  “You promised him you would not give your money to the church?”

  Grégoire could not seem to bring himself to speak. Instead, he only nodded.

  “You did not swear an oath,” the abbot said, hoping it was not true.

  “I did, Father. I am sorry, Father.”

  “Brother Grégoire, you cannot swear contradictory oaths!”

  Grégoire fell on his face. “Please,Your Excellency, Father Abbot, do not make me choose between my father’s wishes and the Holy Father’s! Please, have mercy on this sinner!”

  The bishop was going to say something, but Brother Grégoire was the abbot’s charge. “Brother Grégoire,” the abbot said, standing up to tower over his monk, “you have sworn falsely, you have deceived the church, and you have disobeyed the Rule in writing and in action, knowing full well what you were doing. However, you told me previously that you wished to repent fully. However, I must punish you, so that you may see your error, as St. Benedict prescribed. Today, you will return to your cell, and take bread after the rest of your brothers. Your excommunication stands and you will remain in silence until tomorrow, when you will submit to the discipline of the Rule. Then you will write to your brother, explaining the situation, and beg to be relieved of your oath. From there, we will go forward with the financial matters that remain.” He put his hand on Grégoire’s head. “Have faith in Christ, who has forgiven greater sins.You may go.”

  “Thank you, Father. Your Excellency.” He bowed again and, holding his rosary tightly, hurried off to his cell, passing other brothers, who were forbidden to look at him.

  The heaviness that had descended upon Abbot Francesco did not lift as they returned to his office, the bishop once again taking the abbot’s chair and leaving the abbot to stand. “I will call for a doctor. I want him on hand tomorrow.”

  “What about the funds?”

  “You had best forget about them, beyond the five thousand in Madrid. And even there, you are chasing a ghost,” the abbot said. “His brother will freeze his assets as soon as he hears of this, if he has not already.The banker in Madrid is an Englishman.”

  “Who is his brother?”

  “Aristocracy, I believe. He owns land in the north of England.” He paced, hoping it would relieve the pain in his heart. It did not. “I have allowed Brother Grégoire to visit him twice since taking the cowl here. He is attached to his English family.”

  “Even though he is a Frenchman.”

  “Yes. It seems Grégoire is the child of the elder Señor Darcy—his father—and a French maid. She was sent home to have the child, who was named after someone else in the family, presumably. Despite his illegitimacy, Grégoire was acknowledged by both his blood father and his half-brother, the heir to the fortune. He also has a half-sister he is very fond of, now married to a Scottish earl,” he said. “Grégoire has admitted to me that his brother and sister tried to persuade him from a life in the church many times, before he took his final vows and after the monastery in Bavaria was dissolved. They begged him to enter the Church of England, but he refused. He wanted the contemplative life and would settle for nothing else. He has been a pious monk and perhaps the greatest apothecary our monastery has ever seen. He has saved any number of lives with medical knowledge he picked up in England. And he is all humility.”

  “He is also quite wealthy.”

  “Yes.” The abbot put his hand on his head. “There is that. We will not ask him to choose between the church and his family. Some deal will be reached with the brother and this will all pass.”

  But something told him it wouldn’t.

  “Darcy, you’re kicking me.”

  That brought him out of his sleep. Or at least, it brought him to more awareness, for he had not been asleep for some time. He had woken in the middle of the night and had not been able to return to sleep, and tossed and turned to the point of accidentally kicking his wife. “I am sorry,” he mumbled, kissing her nearest available limb. It turned out to be her shoulder.

  “Are you all right?” Elizabeth said, stroking his cheek.

  “Yes. I just—feel restless.” He kissed her again. “I’ll have a bite of something, perhaps.”

  “Try not to wake the children.”

  “Is that all you will say to me?”

  “Oh,” she said, “and I love you.”

  He smiled and dressed himself in a robe and slippers before leaving the chamber, armed with a lit candle. Sometimes he had nights where he could find no sleep or had a disturbing dream; some Austrian ghosts continued to haunt him. But he usually solved that with a cup of a special concoction of Dr. Maddox’s. This was different. Finding himself not hungry, he wandered the halls of Pemberley like a ghost. The moon was full and its light shone through the windows of the great hall. In days past, he had often walked outside with his dogs; how he missed them.

  Somehow, he found himself in the chapel. He was rarely there when his brother was not in residence. He considered himself a faithful Christian, but he felt he fulfilled his obligations by weekly church attendance and being a charitable man. The candles for the chapel were not lit, and the cold stone made it a soothing room in the late summer warmth. Those castles of the Middles Ages must have been drafty.

  He was not alone. Anne Darcy was sitting on one of the hard wooden pews, wrapped in a blanket. “Anne?”

  “Papa!” she shouted with delight, and lifted her arms. He sat down beside her and lifted her onto his lap, which she was getting a little big for.

  “What are you doing awake? Where is Nurse?”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “What are you doing here, then? Why are you not in the nursery?”

  “I was talking to somebody.”

  “You were?” His alarm was rising. “Who?”

  “I don’t know him. He said he was one of Uncle Grégoire’s friends.”

  “Anne,” he said much more seriously, “what did he look like?”

  “He had a beard and a funny accent.” She whispered, “I think he was a ghost.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “He said he was really old,” she said. “Older than Grandpapa!”

  “Did he say his name?”

  “No.”

  “Anne, darling, you know you should not speak to strangers, especially in the middle of the night.” He didn’t want to frighten his daughter. So he said calmly, “Just promise me that if yo
u see a stranger in Pemberley, you will tell someone immediately. Promise?”

  “Promise.” She hugged him. “He was just a ghost.”

  “And you’re not scared of ghosts?”

  “He was a nice ghost.”

  He sighed. She had imagined the whole thing, or fallen asleep and dreamed it. “Very well. What did you talk about?”

  “Uncle Grégoire.”

  “Of course. He’s Grégoire’s friend, is he not? What did he have to say about his good friend?”

  “He said he was worried about him.” She looked up at her father. “Is he in trouble?”

  “I—don’t think so,” he said. “But I suppose if a ghost said so—well, he might know something we don’t.”

  “Are ghosts smart?”

  “I suppose that they’re as smart as they were when they weren’t ghosts, sweetie.” He rose, picking her up with him. “Why don’t we discuss it with your mother in the morning? Someone is up past her bedtime.”

  “Papa!”

  But he would not listen to protest. He carried his daughter, with her head resting on his shoulder. By the time he reached the nursery, she was already asleep, and he laid her down on her bed, not disturbing her sleeping younger sisters.

  Back in his warm bed, with his wife by his side, he finally closed his eyes, but sleep was slow in coming.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Discipline of St. Benedict

  FOR THE REST OF HIS DAYS, all Abbot Francesco Chiaramonti could truly recall of the exact moment he knew something was wrong, was the color red. It stained the steps that he ascended.

  “Father! We must not touch blood!” Because they were monks.

  He did not listen to the prior. He knew it was true and he did not care. He did not touch blood—he stepped straight in it, kneeling before Grégoire’s collapsed figure.The layman hired for the job (the church did not spill blood) had already stepped back with his flail. The bonds holding down the monk had come loose and he had lost consciousness, his head hitting the stone. The doctor had declared the young and relatively healthy Grégoire good for no less than ten strokes, but he had only made it to three.

  “Don’t just stand there!” the abbot shouted to the doctor. “Help me! ”With his own withered hands he tore apart Grégoire’s bloodied shirt. His intention was to get the wounds in view of the doctor, but that was not what happened.The cloth came apart to reveal the coarse cloth of a hairshirt.

  The effect was instantaneous. The monks and even the bishop got on their knees, crossing themselves. “My goodness,” Bishop Valerano said, “we’ve killed a saint.”

  He would not believe it. He could not believe it. He refused. Instead, he felt for a pulse. He did not have adequate words of praise for God when he found one. “Almost, Your Excellency, but not quite. Now we must save his life, or we are all damned.”

  “Father,” said Brother Martin, “please.” He held up a change of robes.

  This shook the abbot from his stupor enough to realize that it would be prudent to change out of his blood-soaked robe. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  “The brothers—we have circulated a petition that we might fast for Brother Grégoire’s recovery until he is out of danger.”

  Normally, he would not want an entire abbey of lethargic, hungry monks, but he said, “Yes, of course.”

  He stood up from the bench outside Grégoire’s cell for the first time since the door had been closed and the doctor had set to work. He returned to his own cell, where he changed his robe.The old one would probably have to be discarded. “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned,” he said in the darkness before returning to his vigil. The bishop had said nothing, but removed his cap and was pacing nervously.

  Finally the door was opened, and the abbot let himself in, closing the door behind him. Grégoire was on his mattress, asleep or unconscious, and on his side. He was wearing nothing above his waist and his back was covered in bandages.

  The doctor was still cleaning his hands of blood. “Father.”

  “Doctor.Will he live?”

  “I’ve done all I can, Father. I’ve sewn him, but his flesh was weak—from the um, shirt, I presume.” He was clearly out of his element with this, even though he had treated many punished monks. “He has lost a great deal of blood; probably too much. As soon as he wakes, he should drink something.”

  The abbot nodded numbly. “How long do you suspect he was wearing the cilicium—the hairshirt?”

  “I-I do not know, Father. There is no way to tell.”

  “But—it was not new.”

  “No. He has scars from it on his chest. He must have been wearing it for—a year, at least.” He whispered, “Father, if you had known—”

  “We would have suspended the sentence, of course. But we did not know. I did not know. Brother Grégoire, why did you prescribe your own penance? Why did you not tell me?” He looked at the still monk, and then up at the doctor. “You have my blessing for all of your work, Doctor. We will call you again for the stitches to come out, yes?”

  “Yes. In two weeks. There were—many of them.” He bowed, and excused himself as quickly as possible.

  Not ready to face the bishop, his flock, or anyone else, Abbot Francesco knelt beside Grégoire. He knew of the boy’s flagellant history, but Grégoire had said he stopped that when he became a Benedictine. Apparently, he had found a new way to torture his flesh. The abbot, watching him breathe, took the young hand in his old, withered one. “What great sin do you think have you done? What are you fortifying yourself against? You are no service to the Holy Spirit as a dead man, my son.” He smoothed over the tangles in Grégoire’s curly brown hair. “I swear, if you are good enough to us to survive, I will do everything in my power to protect you—from the bishop and from the church.” He bowed his head. “And from yourself.”

  When they rose the next morning for Vigils, Prior Pullo, who had the last watch, reported that Grégoire had briefly woken to take water and some soup, but had said nothing. Nonetheless there was much rejoicing, and they all broke their fast together, though they ate in silence.

  The abbot was on his way to visit Grégoire’s cell after Sext when he was called to inspect gifts for the abbey. He went to the door to find baskets of goods—cheeses, milk, fresh fruit, and vegetables. “From the villagers,” said the doorkeeper. “They’ve been leaving them all day, for Brother Grégoire.”

  “Who told them?” he said.

  “I don’t know, Father. No one’s been in or out today.” He shrugged. “Perhaps they suspect something because he’s not been visiting the people for the past few days. They might assume that he is ill.”

  He nodded. “Bring the baskets inside. And if anyone comes to ask, tell them nothing. We do not want gossip.”

  “Of course, Father.”

  In the evening, Grégoire woke again. The abbot was watching this time. It was clear that the monk was in too much pain to speak, but again they forced him to drink broth, and a bit of the milk from the villagers. They called the doctor again, and he prescribed a mix of items mashed in water for him to drink.

  The abbot spent much of his time in the chapel. A spiritual weight pressed down on his chest, making it almost hard to breathe.

  “Father.” It was Brother Marcus. “I was changing his sheets because they were soaked and—”

  “And what?”

  The monk held up the white sheet. The blood stains formed a broken cross, but a cross nonetheless. The abbot rose quickly and took the sheet from the monk. “Say nothing of this.”

  “But Father—”

  “Nothing. No talk of miracles.”

  “There is already talk of miracles.”

  “No more talk then. I forbid it.” He put his hand on the shoulder of the confused monk. “Trust me. It is better for Brother Grégoire if he is not spoken of in this manner. No good will come of it.”

  The monk nodded and left. The abbot went to the cellars, and burned the sheet. “Don’t do this to yoursel
f,” he said to Grégoire afterward. “You will bring a whirlwind down on your head.” Grégoire had no response; his eyes weren’t open. “When you wake, I will tell you everything terrible of this world. You must protect your own soul from it, and not in this manner.”

  There were abbey matters that could not be put off any longer, and so on the third day, he returned to the paperwork and the mundane parts of being the abbot of a large monastery. It was then that the bishop, who had, no doubt, been plagued by thoughts of his own, intruded.

  “I am to report to the archbishop.”

  “Please do not,” the abbot said. “I beg of you. Let Brother Grégoire speak for himself first.”

  “He should at least hear.”

  “There is too much to hear. It is all talk.”

  “If Grégoire is a saint—”

  “I don’t want to hear that word!” the abbot shouted. “I have told people not to speak it—why don’t they listen to me?”

  “Do you believe it?”

  He looked away. “It is not the point. If it goes beyond these walls, it will go straight to Rome, and Brother Grégoire will never hear the end of it. The church always needs another saint.”

  “And you think that is a bad thing?”

  “You forget, Your Excellency, that I was once archbishop of Oviedo and before that, a bishop outside Rome. I will not have him sent to the wolves. He is just a young monk who is overzealous in the mortification of the flesh. Besides, it is useless to even speak of sainthood before he’s been dead for decades, except for political gain.” He eyed the bishop. “Do not report to the archbishop.”

  “I must.”

  “Then do not say anything of significance. The investigation is going on. That is not a lie.”