Angels in the Architecture

by Sue Fitzmaurice

  ‘But I have not come to tell of that, alas. I have a tragedy to report and felt some stirring need to bring this news to you myself directly. Ah, such a misfortune, it breaks my heart to reveal it.’

  Father Taylor’s anxiety rose anew.

  ‘A mere boy, Father. A mere boy. Fell this morning from a steeple. To his death below. I can barely conceive such a tragedy further afflicts your small diocese, not to mention that it mars the unfolding of this great epoch surrounding our beautiful cathedral.’

  Father Taylor had turned his head to wait the Bishop’s further revelation, not fully understanding the import of Hugh’s words – a death? Some young lad. Amongst so many workers, it was surely inevitable.

  ‘And one of his brothers,’ Hugh continued, ‘witnessed his own brother’s fall.’

  And instantly Father Taylor knew of whom the Bishop spoke, and while he could not conceive of why, he feared the telling of this to the boy’s family.

  Perhaps reading the priest’s thoughts, the Bishop continued, ‘I would speak to this boy’s family myself, Father. It is I that must bear some responsibility for this I feel. Such grief I cannot ask you to give news of yourself.’

  Father Taylor felt a relief, although he wondered whether he was expected to protest from courtesy that such a task was surely his.

  ‘I would ask you to convey me to this family, Father. Do you know perhaps of whom I speak? Warriner, I believe is the name.’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace. I guessed when you said of the brother. It is the family of the young boy that was attacked recently in the marketplace. There were three older sons went to the Cathedral from this one family. There are seven sons altogether, and three could surely be spared for this great task. It is an honour for any family to assume such a commitment, Bishop.’

  ‘Ah no, Father. It is surely not. What does this cathedral, my own great undertaking, do for these poor, really? Surely nothing. Such a loss, such a loss. Three sons gone, and now one never to return.’

  The Bishop remained head back and eyes closed, and Father Taylor had no further word to add. He felt small and unworthy of this charitable figure before him, and wondered at how he continued always, despite his will, to think so poorly of the ragged and the peasantry where the Bishop seemed to understand their hearts and their lot.

  The two men sat in silence, one in contemplation of the harshness of life, and the other, thinking of the harshness of his own.

  After some minutes, Hugh asked, ‘What do you believe, Father, is the role of our beloved Church in this world?’

  The small priest wondered at the bewilderment in the Bishop’s tone, and what appeared almost an intimacy from the Bishop in expressing some apparent lack of assuredness at his own role, and perhaps even confiding in himself, a far lesser churchman, a lack of confidence, even a fear. He saw an opportunity to impress the Bishop with some pert wisdom, some comforting selflessness that recognised a brief moment of equal burden, man to man, one man of God to another. Could he presume to share the Bishop’s space in the world, presume to raise his smallness to some nobler, more humane level that could connect with Hugh’s greatness?

  ‘It frightens me sometimes, my Lord; that we presume to lead these many poor to some sense of purpose, of greatness, when their very survival day-by-day holds them to their small lives.’ He paused. ‘And we are just men ourselves.’

  And he’d done it. He knew he had said something of reality, without harshness, and with heart and understanding for their own daily trials as Churchmen, and for those of their parishioners.

  ‘Ah, you see indeed, Father. Thank you, thank you. It is so difficult at times, and there are so few I can turn to. I am most grateful for your understanding.’

  Father Taylor felt blessed. His star had risen. Momentarily, he understood the valueless character he had injected over so many years, into his world and how it daily turned back into his soul, halting his progress beyond himself and into the realm of a greater selflessness that he knew this man at his side occupied. He knew also how he would seek to reoccupy that position repeatedly, now that he felt its touch, and that in seeking it, it would elude him yet still. But something had cracked and opened in him, and he felt, oddly, his smallness, greater than ever before.

  Is this what is demanded of us? Is this how one becomes great? By losing one’s purchase to the realities of sadness and anger and hysteria?

  The moment passed, and Hugh stirred from his collapse.

  ‘You must take me now to this family, Father. I must unburden myself to this poor boy’s mother. But if I may have a brief refreshment, might I prevail upon your housekeeper a moment?’

  ‘Of course, Your Grace. Please, stay here and I will return,’ said Father Taylor, and he rose from beside the Bishop and hurried away to find the harassed woman, feeling some new, albeit small and brief, sympathy for the poor hen.

  ‘Tell me what you know of this family Warriner, Father.’

  The two men rode Father Taylor’s dusty trap, the day hot again already beyond belief.

  ‘They are as like any other poor family, Your Grace, very hard-working. The youngest child, the boy that was attacked, is not right though – an idiot they say. He doesn’t speak, and appears for all the world not to notice a thing, a burden to a poor family where he does not make any difference to their worldly goods. But the others are all strapping youths and as much like any other young men.’

  ‘And the parents?’

  ‘The father is a large and gruff character. The mother is unusual I feel. She has an insight that is almost perturbing. A certain grace, dare I say of one so lowly. She is as most mothers are just the same, a stalwart to her family and her village – capable and strong.’

  ‘Then she will bear this grief like the many others she has undoubtedly had, with great heart and great sorrow. And the father will anguish and kick his sons more – this is the way of these things I see.’

  Father Taylor drove on, searching for another piece of wisdom he may bring to the situation to endear himself further to the Bishop and bring himself within his orbit. But nothing came, and he rode the horse on in silence and discomfort. He had no particular wish to meet the Warriner woman again.

  The once verdant village countryside was long browned as the unheard of heat of the summer drew to its peak. Bush and scrub were variously dead and dying, and even the largest of oak and willow appeared decidedly autumnal with browning leaves; water holes, and streams long dried up and clayed over. Dust from the hooves before them blew up and coated their black cassocks, their hair and hats and faces, and Father Taylor wished for a speedier, more comfortable travelling. Indeed, he wished for a better carriage although such was not the lot of a village priest.

  The rattling trap passed over a deep rut in the road, tossing the two men about on their seat. The priest cursed himself that he had not kept his eye more to the road ahead so that he could slow at the sight of these many ruts, caused equally perhaps from the dry and heat as from the recent earthquake. He had no wish to cause any injury, or even discomfort, to the Bishop beside him. But the Bishop seemed not to notice any inconvenience. Did these physical demands not afflict him?

  Rounding a bend into a small copse, Father Taylor knew they would come upon the Warriner holding momentarily, and he remarked to the Bishop, ‘Just ahead, Your Grace.’

  The copse provided a brief respite from the burning sun, and the coolness gave a pause to the priest’s heated angst, only to increase in its fervour again as the trap emerged along the final yards to their destination. Father Taylor could see the figure of the Warriner woman sitting at the outside of her small stone hut, and he noticed she looked up to their arrival, coming as it did with some clatter and much dust.

  For her part, Alice Warriner could see straight away the figure of the priest and wondered why she was to be disturbed by his presence yet again. But then she noticed another figure atop the buggy next to the priest and wondered at this personage, seeming as he did – for she could se
e it was a man – to be someone with a gravitas more than that of the ungainly priest. Indeed, as they drew alongside the yard’s stone wall, she knew it was this other man’s due that she should raise herself to her feet, and so she did, moving a few steps towards this arrival. Thomas sat at her feet playing at his stones and circling them around and around like a snail shell, each neatly end to end as always. In between his careful placement of each stone, his arms flailed around him, as though to bat away an insect that bothered him. It did not seem he noticed any other thing in his periphery though.

  ‘Good day, Mrs Warriner,’ called Father Taylor, climbing from his seat and turning to be of assistance to the Bishop, although this was not the Bishop’s requirement.

  ‘Good day to you, Father,’ replied Alice.

  The priest felt himself momentarily ill at ease, not knowing quite how it was he should introduce the arrival of one such as a Bishop to such a woman as this. In his awkwardness though he failed to notice that no introduction seemed necessary since Alice Warriner, with no real knowledge as to this stranger’s identity, recognised nonetheless the heady position he represented and curtsied reverently and low.

  ‘My dear woman. Please. This is not necessary,’ spoke Hugh, moving towards the bowed woman before him. ‘Please,’ and he held out his hand to help her raise herself, and once she had done so, he still held her hand. Hugh drew a deep breath, anticipating his revelation to this woman, but then noticed the small boy on the ground beside where they stood.

  Thomas babbled to himself, waved about, and focused still on his pebbles and the precision of their formation. He looked back to his mother.

  ‘And who is this?’

  ‘This is my youngest, Lordship. His head is not the same as the others, but he is a sweet boy just the same.’

  ‘Yes, I see this,’ said Hugh, and he let go the woman’s hand and stepped towards the boy, kneeling down to him and putting the same hand, just as within the mother’s, upon the boy’s fair, dusty head.

  Thomas Warriner had muck in his head. Forces not usually noticed by any other person moved rapidly in his brain, demanding his analysis, his contemplation, and his action. A hand upon his fair head he did not especially feel, but a glow that no one else would see emanating from that same source sent a tiny thrill of light behind his eyes, somewhere lost inside his complex brain, and he looked up into the stranger’s eyes and noted a light behind them too, and being as that was a familiar energy to him, he smiled.

  And the Angels wept.

  Not for the first time of late, Alice Warriner noted something not usual in her son’s behaviour – that he would look into another’s eyes like this, so directly, and smile. She did not know that when Thomas saw a face – more than when he saw any other thing – he saw a thousand faces, and these many images would overload the workings of his brain so much that the energy of it made him feel he might explode, so although he knew a face to be a face, he preferred not to look at them.

  But this face had clarity, and the thousand were synchronous and balanced, and this created a belonging, and Thomas did not feel he was a separate thing from this face, but a part of it and in it.

  The stranger looked to the mother. ‘There is more to this young man than we would know, I think.’

  ‘I’ve always thought so, sir.’ Alice was pleased to hear someone say such a thing about Thomas.

  ‘Indeed,’ stated the stranger, looking back to the boy and smiling at him again.

  The stranger rose, seemingly reluctantly, and he turned back to Alice.

  ‘I am a bearer of sad tidings to your house, good lady, and it pains me greatly that your burden should grow heavier.’

  Alice could conceive of little that could add further weight to her life and thought the stranger, though clearly a comforting and noble sort, could not understand at all how she saw her life. But then she saw a sadness that seemed at odds with such a man.

  ‘Mistress,’ interrupted Father Taylor, ‘this is His Grace, the Bishop – Bishop Hugh from Lincoln.’

  Alice began another curtsy but was stopped by Hugh.

  ‘My dear woman, that is not necessary, not at all.’

  Alice contented herself with a head bow.

  ‘You have a son gone to the cathedral at Lincoln, madam?’

  ‘There are three gone, y’Grace.’

  ‘Yes, yes. And it is my sad chore to say that a youth has fallen a day ago from the height of our great Lady, sadly to his death at the ground below. The youngest I think of your sons gone there.’

  As this news crept slowly towards Alice, she wondered at it. She looked at the words as they came from the Bishop’s mouth and floated to her ear, and she moved the words around, rearranging them as they floated there before her, and she could not be clear whether there was a pain attached to these words, whichever order it was that they fell into. And where she thought perhaps there was, oddly, no pain so attached, then she wondered instead at such an absence, and it was a perplexity that invaded her thoughts. She did not know what she should do with this information, and so she decided instead to walk her mind away from the words, and she smiled at the Bishop and said ‘Thank you, sir.’

  And because the painful words were said and were now left hanging in the ether between the Bishop and the woman, and because they must find a place to settle themselves and be heard, they floated back on the air to the Bishop, and he knew that the burden of this tragedy was once more his, and the imperative to the King for the safety of the Holy City was once more in his mind..

  Something must put all this right.

  Hugh turned and looked down again at the small boy who had continued to watch him, and once more he knelt, and once more his eyes locked with the child’s, and in them he thought he saw the eternity of heaven and the suffering of humanity.

  And how, sweet boy, do you understand this?

  At which the boy’s eyes averted to a whoosh-whoosh that flew across the small party, casting a shadow as if two dark dragons crossed them. Hugh followed the boy’s eyes up to see two enormous white birds cross the sky, and then they flew into the sun’s light and a sting came into his eyes, and when he looked back at the boy, he could no longer quite see him.

  In the tiredness that was the evening, after Alice had told her husband of the Bishop’s visit, the little time she had between work and sleep lay in watching her sleeping sons and stroking the heads of two. As she sat there and dozed off and then woke again, she tried to recall how many sons she had, and for a moment, the count eluded her. There were seven, once she knew, with some lost before and between those, and there were four with her now. Although their father only counted three, which seemed few, and she wondered at how this had come about, to lose one’s children. She decided not to think too much on it, and instead offered up a prayer for those sleeping before her now.

  When she settled on the mat next to her husband, she knew he lay awake staring above him, squinting as though he were trying to make out an insect on a rafter. She smelt him unwashed, saw his hands cut and gnarled and laid on his chest, and wondered how he would cut another wound from his soul, as he had before appeared to do in a heartbeat.

  ‘They were already gone before anyway. But with still only three now… Not enough sons for a man,’ he said, squinting less.

  Not enough sons for a mother.

  Alice closed her eyes. She wished for a prayer to come to her, but none was there, and she felt sleep descend on her, exhausted, a picture of Thomas and the Bishop in her mind.

  There was a grunt next to her.

  ‘We’ll have more then,’ came her husband’s decided breath.

  And Alice, sleepy, wondered again how many it was that she had altogether, and yesterday, and now.

  As different numbers rolled groggily through her mind, her husband stirred. He rolled on to her, and she felt his hand pulling at his tunic and then at hers, lifting it out of the way of his huge legs which pushed between her own. Their strength moved hers apart and a haze she�
��d been thankful for a moment ago left with her husband’s great weight full upon her. It would not have been her wont, but then neither was it something to deny.

  She laid in her same place, less fearful as other times since she could scarcely breathe whenever he climbed on her and laid himself completely on her. It was never in his mind that he might bear his weight himself, and she would never tell him so. She thought that perhaps it would not take so long, although as he’d grown older he was slower. Sometimes he couldn’t finish at all, and then he would always wake an hour or two later and get back on her.

  An ache came into her shoulders and neck as he grunted and pushed at her harder, sweat falling from his head on to her face. She could tell he was becoming frustrated, and she pushed her hips up into him and back again, since this sometimes stirred him more to finish. He pushed at her harder awhile, not making any sound except that he breathed heavier.

  When it seemed his business would not finish in this manner, he pulled out of her and back on to his knees, reaching under her hips and rolling her over in one strong movement on to her belly. He grabbed at her hips and pulled her up to him, entering her again, deeper now. She rested her head on the mat and bore his thrusts against her. She breathed easier now, until finally a roar and his weight came down on her again with his seizure. He laid a few moments longer on her and his breath was right at her ear. Then he groaned and heaved himself up and rolled off her. She knew he would sleep immediately.

  Alice wished only for stillness now, but she stepped up quickly and deftly, thinking she would walk briefly, and if his spill seeped out of her, she would be pleased not to have another child and likely suffer its loss.

  Hugh felt a weighing up in his head between the pressure he might ease from the plight of ordinary folk such as he had just met, and the great task of bringing Henry to a firmness of resolve in pursuing the security of the Holy City. He knew he must travel to France sooner to meet with Henry, for the King had forsaken his responsibility to his English kingdom, even in spite of the great need of his people here. Hugh was reluctant to leave even briefly the reconstruction of the cathedral though, the onus of which weighed even more heavily now with its recent casualty, so young.