by Norah Lofts
No lunatic set on self-destruction ever hanged himself more thoroughly. By the end of six days the charges of striking Brother Lawrence and inciting the mob to devour Grys had been most almost forgotten. I was charged with heresy, blasphemy and devil worship.
Dirk, the lay brother who attended to such matters, had laid on the stripes with enthusiasm; it was now nine days since I had eaten a proper meal; the blister on my heel had festered until my leg as far as the knee was purple and puffy and, on the evening when my lord abbot, Guibert of Gorbalze, summoned me to his presence, I was as miserable a creature as any overlord could wish to own.
IV
I had been an inmate of Gorbalze for almost two years but I had never set eyes upon its abbot. He was confined, by reasons of his lameness, to his own apartments and there had hitherto been no reason why I, a novice, should enter his presence. This remoteness, combined with the story of his past—exciting even to our cloistered youth—made him more of a legendary figure than an actual human being; yet his influence and authority were vital and permeating and everybody in Gorbalze regarded him with awe.
The story told of him was that in his youth he had been a famous knight, remarkable for skill and valour. He had gone to the Holy Land, acquitted himself superbly and been one of the most favoured nominees for the crown of Jerusalem. But in an affray near Joppa he had been set upon by five Saracens and though he had fought them singlehanded, left three dead and two wounded on the field and ridden back in triumph, he had been wounded, it was thought mortally. A spear had pierced his thigh and broken off, leaving the head in the wound, too deeply embedded in the bone for any surgeon to remove. He had lain for weeks in the care of the Knights Hospitallers and then, emerging crippled, had taken himself and the moderate fortune gained from looting the Saracens to Cassino in Italy and remained there, an obscure monk, for some years. Legend attributed his sudden promotion to the abbacy of Gorbalze to his indiscreet sponsoring, in the presence of a visiting dignitary, of the claims of Matilda to the throne of England. Matilda, regarded as a better Christian than her cousin Stephen, was secretly favoured in high places and Guibert’s unorthodox opinion, though sternly rebuked by his own community, resulted in his promotion. He was now in the seventh decade of his age and immobile. The spearhead was still embedded in his thigh and splinters of the bone were said to work out beside it at intervals. It was also said that he suffered perpetual pain and resorted to the use of strange Eastern drugs for its relief.
On the evening when my lord abbot sent for me I wished heartily, amidst all my awe and apprehension, that I had been able to meet the subject of this interesting history in more favourable circumstances. At this moment my lively curiosity, my tendency to hero worship were, like most other things about me, at a very low ebb.
The cell in which I had been lying was semi-dark even at noonday and the passages through which I limped on my way to the abbot’s parlour were black tunnels in which. here and there. the sparingly placed candles behind their horn shields east a flickering, intermittent glow. By contrast the parlour was dazzlingly bright and for a moment or two after my entry I was blinded and blinking like a bat disturbed at midday. It was a small room, circular in shape and the stone walls, recently whitened, caught and reflected the yellow light of the many candles, the red light of the fire.
There was a smell of food in the room too—fish, hot butter, fresh bread—and I felt my shrunken stomach move, half tantalised, half nauseated. I stood squinting, violently willing myself not to be sick. And out of the glare a cool hard voice said:
‘You had better sit down. There is a stool within reach of your left hand.’
I reached out, found the stool and sat down, wincing on account of my bruised buttocks. Once I was seated, the sickness left me; my eyes adjusted themselves to the light and in a moment I was able to look about me.
My lord abbot sat in a high-backed chair, his lame leg supported on a stool and covered with a rug of wolfskins. On his right stood a table bearing books, an inkpot and several quills and a litter of parchments; on his left its fellow bore a flagon, some goblets and a covered dish or two. I saw so much before I ventured to raise my eyes and look into his face.
Save for its colour, a reddish-brown, and the fact that the eyes were open and lively, it might have been a death mask, so harsh and deep and final were its lines. The bones of the brow, the cheek, the jaw, stood out sharply, separated by deep hollowed shadows. Under the bony, jutting nose the mouth was thin, the lips closely folded. Only the eyes, set far back in sunken sockets and yet prominent, were alive, movable, acutely aware. They made me think inconsequently, uncomfortably, of an animal looking out of a den or rock. Altogether a formidable face. I made up my mind that this time I would attempt no explanation, commit myself to nothing. I was briefly thankful for my experience with Father Simplon, Brother Gaspard and the chapter. This time I would confine myself to expressions of penitence. Even to the question which had tripped me into volubility before, ‘Do you believe that the devil answers prayer?’ I would say, ‘I am sorry. I expressed myself ill.’
In that resolve I faced my abbot, waiting. We looked at one another for what seemed an embarrassingly long time. At last he said, ‘Well, you seem to have set this whole place by the ears pretty thoroughly.’
And I, adhering to my resolve, said, ‘I am sorry, my lord.’
‘For your behaviour or its result?’
‘Just generally sorry, my lord.’
I saw him glance towards the table on his right. I knew at once that somewhere there, amongst the litter of parchments, written in the sub-prior’s vile crabbed hand, was a full account of my offences.
‘I should like to hear your own story of the whole episode,’ he said. ‘Begin at the beginning and omit nothing.’
That was very much akin to the opening used by the sub-prior. Compared with Father Simplon’s staccato questions and Brother Gaspard’s angry denunciations, it had a friendly sound; but I had been caught on that hook once and was now wary.
‘My Lord,’ I said, ‘the full account would weary you and only confirm the charges laid against me. I am very sorry that I struck Brother Lawrence and led to the death of Grys and for the other ancillary offences which I committed without full knowledge.’
‘You talk like a lawman, boy. And the information that you are responsible for a death is news to me. Who was this unfortunate Grys?’
‘The grey palfrey, my lord.’
‘Oh. Of course. Grys… The report merely mentioned a palfrey. I remember Grys. He must have been all of eighteen years old. A toughish dish, I would say. For one moment I imagined that you were referring to one of the beggars either killed in the melée or dead from sudden overeating. That was a very real danger, you know. I have known men, after the relief of sieges, to die from repletion. I suppose you didn’t think of that.’
‘No, my lord.’
He sat silent for a little and I thought, He is old, his mind may be a little vague; that mention of sieges may have sent his thoughts running backwards. He may forget that he asked me to retell the story and so I shall have escaped from further involvement.
‘And now,’ he said, ‘tell me—why are you so reluctant to give me your own account?’
Startled into frankness, I told him: ‘Because, my lord, each time I tell the story I worsen matters. Each time something is seized upon and twisted and—’
‘Do you think that I am likely to twist anything you say?’ The harsh voice was menacing; so was the piercing stare with which he fixed me. I felt cold suddenly and remembered that within the Church a man accused of murder had the benefit of clergy and the ‘neck sentence’ in his favour while heresy was another matter. I knew that now in my mind; I might shortly know it through my shrinking flesh…
‘Answer me,’ he said.
‘Not wittingly, my lord, any more than I wittingly intended to do more than give a few starving people something to eat, but—’
‘It may be that by age an
d experience I am enabled to judge better than you, child. Go on, tell me your story.’
So for the fourth or fifth time I recounted all that had happened on the road between Chateautour and Gorbalze. My other listeners had interrupted, either with questions or comments, and contrived to make me angry or emphatic or wildheaded. Guibert listened in silence, never taking his eyes from my face; and, oddly enough, this time parts of my story sounded—there was no other word for it—silly.
‘I see,’ he said when I had done. ‘And now tell me honestly, do you believe that you worked a miracle?’ A trap straightaway, I thought despairingly.
‘My lord, I never claimed—’
‘Of course not. How suspicious you are! I beg your pardon. Are you still of the opinion that a miracle occurred?’
‘At the time,’ I said cautiously, ‘and sometimes since. Until now, in fact. Now I am not so sure.’
‘Naturally. Credulity in one’s listener, even though it be tinctured with horror and superstition, is very stimulating to the imagination. I do not believe in your miracle but then neither do I believe that you are a heretic, a blasphemer or a worshiper of the devil. I think you’re a softhearted, pumpkin-headed boy who has led too sheltered a life and been somewhat suddenly confronted with the problem of suffering. Even your extremely ill-advised outburst to Brother Gaspard upon the immorality of monastic property I can see for what it is—a youthful impatience with a state of society in which things happen to affront your feelings.’ He paused for a moment to allow these comforting, if rather contemptuous, words to sink in and then went on, ‘And I’ll wager my dinner tomorrow that if Father Simplon and the rest of them hadn’t taught you the wisdom of keeping your mouth shut you would now proceed to blurt out to me all that is in your mind. You would demand to know why, if God be merciful, He lets folks starve; and why men like Brother Lawrence and the sub-prior, who have spent their lives in His service, should show themselves in a crisis to be greedy, uncharitable and even a little cruel. Am I not right?’
He was so exactly right—he had reduced all the dark confusion of my mind to two such simple questions that I gaped at him in wonder.
‘Don’t look so moon-struck,’ he said. ‘Do you think you’re the first to ask these unanswerable questions?’
‘They are—unanswerable?’
‘They are answered every day by arrogant fools who juggle words as tricksters juggle plates at fairs. If we had time and if my memory still serves me I could quote you the whole of St. Blaise’s Thoughts on the Subject of Human Pain, not to mention a dozen other authorities. But the questions remain unanswerable. Even Christ never attempted to explain. Certainly He said that not a sparrow falls without God’s knowledge—not concern, mark you, knowledge; but that reflection must have been of little comfort to all the blind in Palestine who didn’t happen to be blind Bartimaeus; or to the hundreds who doubtless went hungry to bed on the night when five thousand were fed by the lakeside; or to the fathers whose little daughters were dead, not sleeping; or to all the widows who chanced not to live in Nain and so must perforce bury their dead sons. Christ never asked why men are hungry, afflicted, bereaved. Within the scope of His attention He relieved distress when He met it and for the rest accepted or ignored it. An example I commend to you.’
‘But Brother Lawrence—’
‘Bless you, child, Brother Lawrence was just a hungry old man who wanted to get home and realised that you can’t feed nineteen people on one capon. By the time you are his age you’ll know that, too, and also that if God were concerned with empty bellies He’d have made figs grow on thistles or so constructed us that we would find oak leaves appetising and nourishing. The fact remains that He didn’t and we must accept it without making futile protests which can only result in charges of unorthodoxy.’
Both glance and voice had softened into something approaching kindliness. I should have been cheered by that and by his tolerant summing up of my behaviour; yet every cool, reasonable sentence seemed to add weight to my depression. Father Simplon sentencing me to bread and water, Dirk laying on the stripes with good will, Brother Gaspard arguing hotly about manorial dues had, after all, been acting in a known and approved pattern, implying that God was good and that I was a sinner to have entertained even a moment’s doubt. But Guibert, under the kindliness, was saying in effect that God was, at best, an enigma and that I was a fool not to have seen that and kept quiet about it. It was rather as though a physician called in to treat me for a mild form of some disease had suggested no medicine but, baring his own breast, had said, ‘See I ail the same thing but I survive, so will you.’
‘What we must now consider,’ Guibert said in a brisker voice, ‘is the practical side of the question. Before we embark upon that, pour me some wine and take a measure yourself… Thank you. Now what I have to say is this. I think it would be very unwise for you to remain here. Brother Lawrence will doubtless do his duty and forgive you for striking him, Brother Gaspard will one day outlive the loss of the palfrey and your revolutionary remarks about church property but something will remain and for many years, in a community of this size, everything you do or say will be, in a measure, suspect. You agree? I understand that you are a penman of some promise, so I propose sending you to Arcelles where they will welcome you. In twenty years they have never succeeded in breeding a penman of their own. You should do well there. And certainly the manorial dues will concern you very little; it is the poorest foundation in Burgundy and as a rest from writing you will doubtless till your own field and fish for your own eels.’ The mockery of the last words was mitigated by a smile which altered his whole face, making it friendly and conspiratorial. And one small corner of my mind put forth the thought, Oh, I’d like to have known you as a young man, seen that understanding, merry look come into your face as we sat in a pennanted tent planning an assault on the infidel… But the main trend of my thoughts ran another way: This is the moment when I must speak; I must say it now but what words can I find?
‘And now, I suppose,’ he said, ‘you will proceed to tell me that you don’t want to go to Arcelles or anywhere else; that you don’t want to be a monk at all; that you have lost your faith and with it your vocation and propose to rush away into the world and commit all the seven deadly sins at once.’ He smiled at me again and I found myself smiling back.
‘I hadn’t thought yet of the sins, my lord. But—but the rest is what I have been thinking for the past few days.’ He became serious immediately.
‘Have you taken any orders yet?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘Why did you enter in the first place?’
‘My father—’
‘Oh yes! Something to do with a vow, wasn’t it? A son, and a manor out of his many for Holy Church if his leg—was it his leg?—mended. Why were you chosen?’
‘I was the youngest and, as a child, small. In his opinion I had not the makings of a knight.’
‘Come here, show me your hands.’
I stood up stiffly. The wine I had drunk—sweet and strong—had gone to my head a little and the floor seemed a long way away. I thrust out my hands, regretting their slight unsteadiness and their more than slight uncleanliness; there was no provision for washing in the punishment cell. Guibert took them in his own, which were thin but of steely strength, and bent back my thumbs and flexed my wrists.
‘Your father was right,’ he ,said, giving me back my hands as though they were something he had borrowed. ‘A born penman’s hands; useless for anything heavier than a dagger. Did you play any instrument?’
‘The lute—a little,’ I said humbly.
‘Would you be welcomed at home? Would your father—’
‘He would crack my skull for me and then, if I survived, send me back.’ That was the truth, innocent of exaggeration. My father was a terrible, fierce man. I remembered my three sisters, packed off one by one, as soon as they had reached marriageable age, to marry men they had never seen; they had been terrified, weeping and, s
ave by my brother William and me, completely unpitied. I remembered William himself, thrown from an unmanageable horse and then savagely beaten for allowing himself to be thrown; and my other brother, whom fat nauseated, condemned to eat fat and fat only for a week, ‘to teach him to master his belly.’ More than once in the past I had been grateful that Father had dedicated me to the Church, for my training was left to a tutor and so long as I minded my book and remained unobtrusive I escaped notice. I had been beaten twice; once for trying, in a moment of madness, to ride the horse which had thrown William and again when the curtain wall was being repaired at our castle and I had slipped away to watch the masons at work. Horses and buildings had always been a passion with me but Father considered that interest in either was unsuitable to one destined to be a monk; and a beating from him was a powerful argument. I knew that if I went home now, with some muddled explanation about lack of vocation, my shrift would be very short indeed.
‘A cracked skull would complicate, rather than simplify, the problem of your future,’ my abbot said. ‘And it may be a problem. A few years ago I could have thought of a dozen noblemen to whom I could have recommended you as scribe and musician but these are bad times. The idea of a new crusade hangs in the air and even the greatest are beginning to count mouths at table and practise economy. Also, there are too many young men—and quite a few women—who can handle a pen after a fashion.’ There was another significant little pause. ‘It would be rather a pity, don’t you think, if your sympathy with the starving poor resulted in your joining their numbers? At the moment you are angry with God for letting some peasants starve, angry with Brother Lawrence for not sharing your anger, angry with me for talking cold sense instead of hot theory. But I would quite seriously advise you not to let these angers—which will pass—ruin your whole career. There is a difference, you know, between a career and a vocation. Inside the Church a good penman has an assured future; outside it he may starve. I would advise you against making a hasty decision.’