His abbot considered this. “Have I—I haven’t met your mother, have I, Brother Conradus?”
The novice shook his head. “No, Father. She has many responsibilities at home, and we are not wealthy. It would be difficult for her to make the journey here, for we live twenty miles away. I came here by myself. And anyway, that was when Father Chad was standing in while we waited for you. No, you haven’t met my mother.”
“I hope I do one day,” said Father John, “for I think I would like her very much. Is that all then?”
And this time Brother Conradus said yes, he had nothing else on his mind.
As he walked along the cloister away from the abbot’s lodge, Conradus felt he had been right to have laid his concern for Father William before his abbot, but it saddened him to think there was no comfort he could offer. He resolved to hold before his mind the words that had arisen within him and enfold Father William in prayer on every possible occasion until whatever it was that so oppressed his soul had been driven away.
After the young man had gone, John sat in thought without moving for some while. Afraid. Unhappy. Worthless. Full of shame. He wondered how much of it was Brother Conradus’s imagination. Even so, somehow… it didn’t sound good. At the very least it seemed that William had been less than gentle with this novice on several occasions. In a sudden, swift movement of decision, he left the unfinished work on his table and went out through the door to the abbey court, heading for the checker. He got halfway there, then his footsteps slowed. Almost there, he stopped, changed his mind, and turned back along the way he had come. He wanted to speak to Brother Cormac first, though he was not sure of finding him in the kitchen at this time of the day. It seemed prudent to reassure himself, before opening the matter with William, that Brother Conradus’s motives could entirely be trusted.
The long wall of the refectory had a door onto the abbey court, so John went in there as the quickest route to the kitchen and came upon Brother Cormac and Father William going through the weekly check of the knives and spoons.
“Well met! I was looking for both of you!”
They looked up and stopped the count, but John said, “No, no! I won’t interrupt you—well, no more than I already have. I need to speak with you, Brother Cormac, and I’ll just wait here for that until you’ve finished; it’s only something quick. Father William, if you are free to do so, will you call into my house after None? Thank you. There’s something I needed to talk over with you. I’ll sit and wait here until you’re done—no rush.”
Having satisfied himself that nothing had been lost, broken, or stolen, William thanked Brother Cormac, inclined his head in a movement of flawless courtesy to John, and was on his way as Cormac returned the utensils to the kitchen. Watching William as he interacted with Brother Cormac, John tried to evaluate what he observed as dispassionately as he could. He could see that a novice might find him intimidating; his entire demeanour was of a man who took no prisoners. His tone was brisk and neutral, not especially friendly. There was nothing in him to reassure or encourage, except when he deliberately put it there, which most of the time he did not. But that didn’t appear to bother Cormac; they seemed easy together.
“So. How can I help you?” Cormac was back from the kitchen and wiping his hands on his apron. Looking at him John was not sure which would come off worse, the apron or the hands, but he thought that might be a matter for another day.
“Would you close the door, Brother?” asked John. “It doesn’t matter if we are interrupted, but I would rather not be unknowingly overheard.”
Cormac went back and closed the door and came to sit on the bench on the other side of the table from John, braced for a scolding. He had no idea what he might have done wrong, but he couldn’t think of any other reason his abbot might want to speak with him in private.
“Tell me what you think of Father William.”
Brother Cormac looked at him, startled. He hadn’t been expecting that.
“Um… in general? Or with regard to anything in particular?”
The caution in Cormac’s voice alerted John. He felt glad he’d asked.
“In general. Though if there’s anything in particular you’ve seen, you might tell me.”
John was surprised by Cormac’s reaction to this. He had imagined this interview would be easy and short. He would say, What do you think of Father William? And Brother Cormac would say, Efficient but fairly hard work or some such thing, because this was simply the preamble to what he really wanted to ask him. But the unexpected reticence in Cormac’s eyes told him he’d stumbled on more that he’d been looking for.
“He… Father William fulfills his work meticulously.” Brother Cormac was finding his way with a puzzling degree of caution. “He can be… well, he is… Father William can be brusque on occasion.”
John looked hard at his kitchener, who met his eyes with his own level gaze that gave nothing away.
“Is something the matter? Have you had some kind of altercation with Father William?” John probed further and was even more puzzled to see a look of relief enter Brother Cormac’s eyes.
“No,” he said with conviction. “Never. No, I haven’t.”
“And there is nothing else you want to tell me about him?”
“No, Father, there is not.”
What? thought John. What is it? He was not set at ease by the look of helpful innocence that Cormac’s face now wore. But whatever it was his kitchener felt was better left unsaid, John thought he stood very little chance of prying it out of him. Brother Cormac was not that kind of man.
“Is he courteous with the men in the kitchen? Is he helpful? Is he pleasant?”
Cormac’s face lit up in a grin of pure merriment at that. “Father William? Those would not have been the first words I’d have picked to describe him, if I’m honest. But he’s not exactly discourteous or unhelpful or unpleasant—he just does his job. He comes in here and we’re glad when he’s gone, but there’s no harm in him.”
John nodded. “I understand. And tell me now—how would you describe Brother Conradus?”
Again Cormac smiled. “A godsend, I should think. He is… now let me think. I was going to say the word that comes to my mind when I think of Brother Conradus is ‘enthusiasm,’ but that’s not quite right. He certainly has more enthusiasm for almost anything than anyone else I know, but the word that sums him up best is ‘kind’. Brother Conradus is a soul of pure kindness. It’s a pleasure to work with him, and I hope he decides to make full profession here and stay with us always.”
“And can I ask you—there is no guile in Brother Conradus? He would never in your view try to manipulate anyone?”
This made Brother Cormac laugh. “No,” he said. “He would not.”
“Thank you.” His abbot looked satisfied with this. “That’s all I wanted to know. And you yourself? All is well with you?”
Brother Cormac assured him that it was, and they rose each to go about his own business, Cormac in the kitchen garden where he wanted to take the pea haulm down to be threshed, and John to the checker—his conversation with Cormac about Conradus had been shorter than he thought it could have been, and he did not want to return to other matters until he had sorted this thing out.
He found William in the checker haggling with a cordwainer over a better price for winter boots. John nodded good day to Brother Ambrose and gestured to him to remain seated and carry on as normal, then moved a miscellany of items from a stool to a small unoccupied space on the counter running the length of the room along the wall opposite the door. He sat on the stool and waited quietly, watching William. The tradesman didn’t stand a chance. He went away looking crestfallen, with a good order that he had clearly needed, but at a price that would leave him working long hours for very little profit at all. William bade him a formal, brief, courteous farewell, then turned to his abbot.
“I’m so sorry, Father John,” he said. “I had not meant to keep you waiting.”
“You
haven’t,” replied John, thinking how different was William’s demeanour from the days that seemed so long ago now, when they travelled to Motherwell and brought Madeleine home, and Oswald. The glimpse into the warm and vivid personality he had caught was lost; William had retreated behind locked shutters, it seemed.
“I just came to see if you could spare the time to see me now. I was finished earlier than I thought.”
William readily assented and, without bothering with any parting pleasantry to Brother Ambrose, left the checker with his abbot.
“I thought you pushed that cobbler a bit hard,” John remarked.
“Yes,” said William, “that’s my job. I’m here to make our finances work, to earn us money and save us money and keep our coffers protected and full.”
John did not reply immediately. Then he ventured, “You do that well, and I am—we all are—grateful. But there are other currencies than money. If you take care to accrue goodwill, it is a standby when money fails, and it sweetens life and oils the wheels of trade relationships even when there is money in the bank.”
William had no answer for this. It had not occurred to him to think along these lines.
They reached the abbot’s lodge in silence. William leaned forward to open the door, then stood aside respectfully to allow his superior to precede him. John felt uneasy. He thought Cormac was right. There was nothing to complain of: William was punctiliously polite. But his manner had no warmth; it was closed and guarded.
“Sit you down,” said John, and indicated the chairs by the hearth. The two men sat down together.
William looked at him, waiting. John tried to think of some general conversation to ease the way into what he wanted to say and could not. So, “Brother Conradus has been to see me,” he said, and William looked immediately wary.
There’s something, thought John, something with these kitchen brothers… something these men are choosing not to tell me.
“He is concerned for you.”
“Oh?” William’s face and tone remained studiedly neutral.
“Yes. He says that he believes you to be extremely unhappy. He preferred not to enlarge further on why. I am assuming that the cause of your unhappiness is what I think it is. Would there be anything else?”
“There is nothing else,” said William. His words sounded very final.
John nodded. “Then I am sorry you are unhappy, but there is nothing, I think, that you or I can do. In due course, time will heal that sadness. To renounce a love is not an easy thing.”
“No,” said William.
John nodded again. He persisted, “Brother Conradus also told me that he believes you feel… let me see… ‘afraid’, he said, and ‘full of shame’ and ‘not worth very much’. And he said he thought there had been times when you had been treated with contempt.”
He looked for, and saw, the telltale flicker of William’s eyes that let him know those observations were accurate and had surely found their mark. “Speak to me about that, William,” he prompted softly.
“Why does he say so?” asked William. “I mean, yes, he’s right. I am often afraid, I have plenty to be ashamed of, and I should judge that contempt has regularly featured in the opinion others hold of me. You know all those things. What’s new?”
He paused. “I ask your pardon, Father. I didn’t mean to sound so rude.”
“He says so,” said John carefully, gently, “because his mother, he tells me, taught him that you can tell how another person feels from how they make you feel.”
William leaned forward in the chair, his arms resting on his knees, his hands clasped together. The shift in position served to hide his face from John, but not before John saw the shadow of weariness and pain.
“Brother Conradus,” John continued, “has not complained of you. I realize well enough how common it is for a man to inform on his brother covertly under guise of expressing concern, but Brother Conradus is not that kind of man. His concern for you is real. Only, I cannot help seeing, and I’m sure you must see too, that you must have been more than a little surly and curt with Brother Conradus, on more than a few occasions, to cause him to register in himself a sense of shame and fear and a feeling of being held in contempt. Would that be fair?”
William swallowed. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I’ve no doubt it would.”
I love your courage, thought John, and I love your honesty.
“Then I think,” he said, gently still, “that you owe him an apology. Meanwhile—is there any way in this that I can be of help? Do you want to tell me anything? Is there anything I don’t know?”
William sat up straight and looked at him.
“Oh, there’s plenty you don’t know,” he said, “but nothing I want to tell you.”
And John surmised from this, as William intended he should, that the summer had been a struggle, and it hurt badly to turn away from Madeleine.
“Well, my brother,” said John softly, “I think you must go and say you’re sorry. He’s only a lad. He knows nothing of your grief. It isn’t fair for him to feel the sharp end of your sorrow.”
William inclined his head in assent. “Can it wait until I’ve finished what I was doing? I’ll go today, but not right now, if that’s all right. I—if it makes things any better—for what it’s worth—I’m not altogether insensible. I know I can be… well… this won’t be the first time I’ve apologized to him.”
“Any time today,” Abbot John gave his permission.
Brother Cormac deftly chopped the herbs and green leaves for the salad. A handful of seeds and one of pine nuts went in, and he covered the bowls, fetched the oil, the vinegar, and the salt, and set them nearby to be added just before the food went to the tables.
“Where is Brother Conradus?”
Cormac glanced up briefly. He had not heard William’s approach. “In the garden, watering the beans,” he replied, reaching for a towel to dry his hands. He looked again at William. Faith! Man in a foul mood, he thought, and wished he’d been a bit vaguer about Conradus’s whereabouts.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
“No,” said William, and he left by the door to the yard.
He walked across the cobbles softened with casual wildflowers at this time of year. Small plants grew round the base of the well. He went through the gap in the hedge into the kitchen garden and saw there Brother Conradus, patiently ministering to the vigorous plants as they bloomed on their tall sticks, with his buckets and pitchers of well water. Turning from the vegetable bed to the path, the novice caught sight of William making his way toward him, and his appearance altered from cheerful contentment to frozen apprehension. He found all the professed brothers inherently awe inspiring to the level of alarm: this one was worse than that. He felt suddenly frightened in case Abbot John had said something that might have made Father William angry with him. He stood on the path awaiting his doom as William walked down toward him.
William stopped in front of him and looked at the ground for a moment. His expression Conradus read as exasperated and irritable. Conradus wondered which thing he might have done had offended him this time.
William was in fact searching without success for some friendly pleasantry to set the novice at his ease. But his mind was empty. He was simply enduring this.
So without any niceties in advance, he knelt on the path before the young man.
“I have spoken to you ungratefully and unkindly,” he said. “‘Surly’ was the word Father Abbot used, and that was accurate. I humbly beg your pardon, my brother. Please forgive me. Again. Please forgive me for doing no better than before. You are teaching me that my habits are selfish and ungracious. Thank you for that, but I beg your pardon. Of your charity, forgive me.”
“God,” thought Conradus. He didn’t say “God”. You’re supposed to say, “I ask God’s forgiveness and yours, my brother.” So, do I say God forgives him too, or is it just me that’s meant to forgive him? Why doesn’t he ever do this according to the rules?
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William remained kneeling before him, his head bent. Looking down on the nape of his neck, Conradus was seized by an unexpectedly overwhelming wave of compassion. The nape of a man’s neck looks so vulnerable, so defenceless. He had an idea that William didn’t give a stuff about the tradition and probably thought his relationship with God was something to be fixed privately, but his contrition was not just a hollow shell of words; Conradus could see that. In the course of his childhood he had often enough witnessed how one of his brothers or sisters, forced by their mother to offer an apology, could fill the gentle words with contempt or even use them to convey a threat. This, he recognized, was something different. William meant what he said.
Before he could think what reply to frame, seeing that William had not asked the right question, Conradus was further startled by his looking up into his eyes. Brother Conradus himself never raised his face to look at the brother whose forgiveness he was required to seek. The experience felt penetrating enough already; it didn’t need intensifying. And he had never seen anybody else do it either. Father Theodore hadn’t said, but Conradus thought you were probably supposed to keep your head bent, for humility. He was beginning to feel out of his depth with this brother.
“Please,” William said, and there was such a world of weariness and sadness in his face.
Brother Conradus thought since this professed brother had made up something and not used the proper form of words, then it might come across as more sincere and less of a formality if he did the same. So, “It’s all right,” he said. “God forgave you every time as soon as you said it, and I forgave you on average about three hours later. Be at peace; it’s done with. It was my fault really. I hadn’t grasped that you don’t like sweetmeats. I won’t pester you again.”
And that seemed to be enough. William got to his feet. “Thank you,” he said, and again Conradus thought he sounded as though he meant it, and yet his voice was dull, as though he could hardly bring himself to think anything.
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