The Wounds of God

by Penelope Wilcock

  And I couldn’t really push them harder than that, Peregrine reflected as he returned to his house after Chapter, to find Brother Tom, having woken, washed, dressed and found himself some breakfast, awaiting further instruction.

  ‘Have you eaten well?’ asked Peregrine. ‘Are you sure now? Then borrow my cloak, for you’ll need it. You must go out of the gates and seek admittance again. Be of good courage.’

  Tom walked out of the abbey, through the little postern door set in the great gate and heard it click shut behind him. He stood on the road, looking up at the turbulent sky, banked with cloud of deepening tones of grey. The wind was sharp as a knife and he wrapped Peregrine’s cloak around him, glad of its protection. The snow that had fallen in the night was mostly melting, but the puddles lying in the wheel-ruts and pot-holes of the road were frozen over.

  Tom thought of Linnet, the last sight he had of her, standing very still, silent tears rolling down her cheeks, her eyes drinking in everything about him and storing it away in her heart. The dreariness and hostility of the weather suited his mood as he turned again to face the great door, asking himself, ‘Am I really going to do this?’ Then he raised his hand, clenched hard into a fist, and beat on the abbey gate. There was no response. He raised his fist again, and thundered on the massive door. There was still no response. Tom stood, nonplussed, for a moment, then remembered Father Peregrine’s words, ‘Have you eaten well? Are you sure now? Then borrow my cloak, for you’ll need it,’ and he understood. They meant to make him wait.

  He wandered about a bit, leaned on the wall and gazed out across the valley, looked down the road towards the village, watched the rooks squabbling in the trees at the roadside. He bent down and picked up a little stick that lay on the road, peeled the bark off it, broke it into bits and threw the pieces away, one by one. The wind was stinging his ears, and he covered them with his hands, but that left his cloak flapping free, so he wrapped it about him again. How long does this go on for? he wondered.

  He went again and beat on the door, but no one came. Feeling slightly foolish, he turned away and sauntered about. He tried to whistle a tune, but the wind snatched the breath from his lips. ‘Mother of God, it’s cold,’ he muttered, and moved close to the shelter of the abbey wall.

  After a while a cart came up the road on business at the abbey. The carter stopped at the gate, glanced at Tom in curiosity, then went through the postern to seek admittance from Brother Cyprian, the porter. The great gate swung open, and the man came out and led his horse through. The cartwheels rumbled across the flags of the yard and the horse’s hooves clattered loud on the stone. Brother Cyprian, closing the gate, nodded to Tom standing there, but had neither word nor smile for him. The noise of the gate as it clanged shut leaving Tom outside echoed through his head, his heart, his soul. He thought of his mother and father. They would be at home now, eating a hearty meal before a roaring fire. And Linnet? Baking maybe, or sitting with her mother and little sister at the hearthside, spinning or sewing. He wondered if she thought of him too. In the abbey now, the midday Office and meal would be over, the brethren going quietly about their work. Francis would be blowing a little warmth back into his numb fingers in the scriptorium. He would be through with that Book of Psalms now. Tom wondered how much of the illumination of it Brother Francis had accomplished himself, and how much Brother Clement had rejected in favour of Brother Theodore’s superior artistry. He could imagine Brother Clement’s face, frowning in irritation as he perused the book, the mediocre lettering, the uneven quality of the illumination divided between Brother Theodore’s and Brother Francis’ efforts, the parchment grubby with sweat and worn with too much erasing. The months of work would likely be dismissed with dry disfavour—‘I doubt if this is one for posterity, Brother.’ Fortunately Francis was used to it, and his good humour was equal to it. It would be good to see Francis again. Tom was not a solitary man. He liked company and conversation; he liked to work alongside other men. The loneliness outside the abbey seemed as final and chilling as hell. The leaden despair of it took hold of him and filled him. ‘Sing something,’ he said to himself. ‘What shall I sing? A psalm, anything.’

  He began to sing, and the words that came to his lips were the words of the Misere: ‘Misere mei Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam. Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam. Have mercy on me, O God, after thy great goodness: according to the multitude of thy mercies, do away mine offences.’

  As he sang the mournful chant, sorrow welled up in him, and though the words came of their own accord to his tongue, his mind was not on them. I’ve broken my vows, disgraced myself, and they may never have me back, he thought. Oh, if they won’t have me, what then?

  ‘Cor mundum crea in me Deus: et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis. Ne projicias me a facie tua: et spiritum sanctum tuum ne auferas a me. Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me.’

  His throat ached with forlorn misery, and he abandoned the chant.

  The heavy catch of the gate was lifted from within with a clang, and Tom turned towards it, hopeful. But it was only the farmer, bringing his horse and cart home. Tom turned his face away, sick at heart. He would not look at the farmer, though he felt the man’s eyes on him. They were not well acquainted, but they knew each other, and Tom had no wish to submit to his questions, or his banter. The abbey gate swung shut and the cart was on its way. The gloomy day began to darken with the shadows of evening, and Tom wondered what time it was. Three o’clock maybe. Half past. The woollen cloak was no longer much protection against the cold. Desperately he beat again on the door, then stood humiliated in the indifferent silence.

  It was getting really dark now. Brother Stephen would be bringing the cows in for milking, and soon it would be time for Vespers.

  ‘Faith, I’m hungry,’ Tom muttered to himself. ‘I could even face Cormac’s bread and count it a blessing.’

  The bell rang for Vespers. Faintly, intermittently, he heard snatches of the brothers singing the Office in the abbey church in the moments when the wind dropped. It was completely dark now, but there were no stars visible. They were all hidden behind the mass of clouds.

  Tom looked up at the great looming bulk of the abbey that towered beside him. I’ve been here hours, he thought. He hesitated a moment, then stepped swiftly to the door and raised his fist, hammering and hammering on the rough, wet wood. The thunder of his knocking echoed in the black silence. There was no response.

  The postern door set in the gate opened presently, and one or two of the villagers who worked in the abbey came out, returning home to their families. Tom drew back into the shadow of the wall, unwilling to be discovered by the light of their lantern. He heard Brother Cyprian’s cheery ‘God give you goodnight!’ and was seized by the most abject, engulfing self-pity that he had ever known. He sank down onto his haunches, squatting on his heels, huddled into his cloak in the scant protection from the wind that the abbey wall offered. ‘Oh, come on,’ he groaned aloud. He had never been so cold and hungry and tired in his life. He seemed to have fallen into a pit of icy black timelessness.

  The bell rang for Compline, and again he heard distant drifts of chanting. After that, the utter profound stillness of the Great Silence descended on the abbey, and a new thought spread like a dark stain of incredulous horror through Tom’s soul. Oh God, they’re not going to leave me here all night?

  It was then that it started to snow.

  Tom looked up at the sky, and the snowflakes settled on his eyelashes, melted in his eyebrows, settled softly onto his face, little dreary kisses of cold wetness. He hunched his shoulders, wrapped his arms about himself, shivering, and bent his face down into his body warmth. Crouched thus in the corner of the gateway to glean what pitiful shelter he could, Tom passed the night dozing fitfully. The cold seemed to have seeped through to his bones and hunger gnawed at him mercilessly. He clu
ng to the hope of the morning when the gate would open, ‘What do you ask of us?’ and the nightmare would be over. He fell asleep towards dawn, but was woken by the sound of voices. Two of the villagers who worked in the kitchens were coming along the road. Tom shrank back against the wall, drawing into the blackness of his cloak, and was thankful to escape the men’s notice as they passed through the inset door.

  The Office bell began to ring. The snow had ceased for the time being, but the air was still and the sky hung heavy with cloud. The occasional snowflake drifted down. Tom rose stiffly to his feet and stamped about a bit, clapping his arms against his sides. The pain of the cold in his feet, especially his toes, was acute, and his ears ached in the wind.

  After a time he heard the door of the porter’s lodge as Brother Cyprian came back from first Mass. The sun rose, its first faint flush of pink swelling to a crescendo of crimson glory in the east. The blush of beauty faded as the day wore on, hour after hour, until the sun was suspended, a white remote ball of light in a leaden sky.

  Straggles of the faithful trudged up from the village to the abbey church for ten o’clock Mass after Chapter, and Tom kept out of sight as best he could. He watched them return again down the hill, bundled in shawls, wearing stockings over their clogs so as not to slip on the icy roads. His eyes followed them until they turned the bend in the road and were lost to view, and then he watched the rooks squabbling in their high, precarious nests, listened to their disconsolate cawing. He looked down at the puddles in the pot-holes, white where air was trapped under the ice, and grey where water touched the frozen surface. One or two blades of grass poked through the flatness of the ice. Far away a dog yelped, its cry carrying in the cold, and a blackbird cackled in alarm in the hedgerow at the top of the road. Into the hopeless eternity of the day, the abbey bell tolled for the midday Office. The sun hung overhead, its glory contracted to a wintry sphere of severity.

  Through the afternoon, Tom either squatted in the corner of the gateway, leaning against the wall, or else he walked to and fro, beating his arms about his ribs to try and keep warm. Sometimes he whispered the words of the prayers the brothers would be saying in the chapel. He thought back over all that had happened in the last few months, remembered that first casual conversation with Francis, standing in the summer garden—What’s her name? Linnet—oh no, Tom, put it out of your mind… It seemed a lifetime ago. Even his thoughts ran sluggishly, frozen. He felt as though he’d been there forever. Once or twice he beat with his fist on the door, but less often, and with less conviction.

  A few callers came and went. Tom bent his head and would not meet their inquisitive gaze. Then the sun was sinking again in a wide glow of ochre light. Darkness, and the Vespers bell, and he sank down hopelessly and sat with his arms tightly round his knees, his head resting on the top of his knees, trying to conserve what vestige of warmth he had. His head ached with hunger and he was thirsty too. After a while he stretched out his hand and scooped up some of the snow that had drifted against the wall, and ate it. He satisfied his thirst with snow, and felt the coldness penetrate inside him.

  The Compline bell rang, and then came the deep silence of the night. ‘No…’ Tom whispered to himself. ‘No, not another night. Oh, please, no.’

  By the middle of that night, Tom could no longer distinguish between the ache of the cold, the ache of hunger and the aching of his cramped body. It snowed again in the night, a light, persistent snowfall, and he felt the dampness oozing through the thick woollen cloak.

  In the early hours of the morning, he stood up clumsily to stretch his cramped and aching limbs.

  I’ve had enough, he thought dully. I’m going home. He trudged fifty yards down the road, then stopped. What if they opened the gate now, after all this waiting, and found him gone? He turned back, running and stumbling up the road to the silent black mountain of the abbey. ‘This is my home,’ he said aloud.

  But what if they never open the door to me? he thought. He searched his memory, trying to think if he had ever heard of anyone who had not even been rejected, but simply ignored, left outside, forgotten. In the lightening grey of the dawn, he sat down again on the abbey threshold and resumed his weary, aching vigil. Just before sunrise, he heard the click of the postern door, and scrambled to his feet, wild with hope. It was old Brother Andrew from the kitchen. ‘I’ve permission to bring you this,’ he said. He held in his hands a steaming bowl of soup. Torn between bitter disappointment and abject gratitude, Tom reached out his hands without a word. He drank the soup greedily, spilling some, his hands and mouth clumsy with cold.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, as he held the empty bowl out to Brother Andrew, ‘that was grand. I thought maybe you’d all forgotten me,’ he added with an attempt at a smile.

  Brother Andrew shook his head. ‘No, lad,’ he said, ‘we’ve not forgotten you.’ Then he took the bowl and went back inside. Tom resisted the temptation to beg him to wait, to come back. Oh God, would it never end? It was like a bad dream.

  That day he sat, most of the day, motionless against the wall, no longer bothering to hide from those who came and went, colder than he had ever thought it was possible to be. The wind cut through to his marrow. He felt bone-cold, as cold as stone. He couldn’t imagine ever being warm again and he tortured himself, conjuring up memories of the blaze of logs in the warming room fireplace. His head ached in a constant dull throb, and he shivered in his damp clothes.

  Evening came, and nightfall and again the snow, and still they left him there. By morning he lay on his side in the snow on the threshold against the abbey gate, shuddering with cold and fever, numb and half-delirious, simply enduring.

  Inside the abbey, as the community was gathering for Chapter, the abbot with his prior, Father Chad, and his infirmarian, Brother Edward, went and opened the great gate. Tom looked up at them, and raised himself on his hands, awkwardly, until he knelt, after a fashion, at the abbot’s feet. Through the dizzy waves of fever that clouded his head he heard Father Peregrine saying to him, ‘What do you ask of us, my son?’ and that firm warm voice spoke hearth and home to him, journey’s end.

  ‘For… the… love… of… God…’ Tom’s lips felt like slabs of clay, robbed of all feeling. ‘For… the… love of God… Father… I can’t say… it. No… admit… me….’ He looked up at Father Peregrine and was overwhelmed by the blaze of love and compassion that met him there.

  ‘Help him,’ said Peregrine abruptly. ‘Father Chad, Brother Edward, help him to his feet.’

  ‘Father, he’s in a bad way. He’s burning up with fever and his clothes are sodden. Should we not take him straight to the infirmary?’

  ‘No,’ said the abbot. ‘Bring him to Chapter.’

  Father Chad and Brother Edward half-supported, half-carried Tom to the Chapter House, where the community was gathered.

  The abbot took his seat in the great carved chair and looked at Tom as he stood, held up by the infirmarian and the prior.

  ‘Thank you, brothers. Let him stand alone,’ he said.

  ‘But, Father…’ protested Father Chad.

  ‘Let him stand alone,’ repeated the abbot. Father Chad, Brother Edward, go to your places.’

  As they left him, Tom swayed on his feet for a moment, his teeth chattering and his body shivering uncontrollably, the room swimming before his eyes. Then his legs gave way under him and he fell on his hands and knees to the floor.

  ‘What do you ask of this community, my son?’ the abbot asked him calmly.

  ‘I beg of you… for the love of God…’ the words came slow and slurred, ‘to forgive me… and admit me again… to this house… here to do penance… amend my… life… and serve God… faithfully… until death…’

  Tom tried to raise his head, but it felt like a lead weight. He knelt on the floor, his arms, which were shaking with fever and fatigue, braced to prevent him from collapsing altogether.

  ‘I think under the circumstances, brothers, it would be unreasonable to ask this man t
o go and wait outside while the community votes.’ The abbot’s voice was aloof and dispassionate. He paused, allowing them to listen for a moment to the shuddering, almost sobbing, labour of Tom’s breathing.

  ‘I ask of you, brothers, will you have him back? Those in favour, please raise your hands… and those against… thank you. My son, we welcome you into this house. May God grant you grace so to amend your life, to do penance and serve him faithfully until death, as you have requested. Deo gratias. Brother Edward, Brother John, get him to bed.’

  Floating in a light-headed haze of fever, Tom submitted gratefully to the care of Brother Edward and Brother John in the infirmary. They stripped him of his wet clothes and rubbed him dry. They gently chafed the feeling back into his hands and feet as he sat wrapped in a blanket before a glowing fire of sweet-smelling apple logs. They dosed him with infusions of elderflower and peppermint, and gave him warm milk and honey to drink.

  ‘I know you’re hungry, lad, but it’s no good you trying to eat in this state. Just take this for now, then a good sleep and we’ll see.’

  They warmed a shirt for him by the fire and dressed him in it, and tucked him into bed like a child, having washed his hands and face and combed his hair. There was a hot brick wrapped in cloths at his feet, and one at his back, and Tom lay in a peaceful daze, contentedly smelling the lavender of the infirmary sheets as he sank into the blissful relief of sleep.

  ‘I think he’ll be all right in a day or two,’ said Brother Edward quietly to Brother John. ‘His chest is clear at the moment. Keep him warm and watch him, and don’t let him eat too much too soon. God bless him, he’s a brave lad. We’ll let him sleep now. That’s the best thing for him.’