Aelred's Sin

by Lawrence Scott

  ‘I’m fine,’ Aelred said, looking up and trying to smile. Brother Theodore’s remark brought a lump to his throat and tears into his eyes. When he was on his own again he found the tears pouring down his cheeks. He would call it homesickness - it was that kind of loss; but it was also all that had taken place, and most of all, it was that he was frustrated that he could not talk to Benedict. What was happening? This was not how he had imagined monastic life. He thought of Ted and what he felt at his funeral. It was his face which was not his. Then there was that smell of frangipani and asparagus fern. Ted’s head was on a white satin pillow.

  He forgot that he was pretending to be untying a knot in the laces of his boot. He was staring at a stream of light coming through a crack in the door, which Brother Theodore had left open. It was filled with myriad specks of dust, floating aimlessly. He remembered staring through a microscope in chemistry class, back at Mount Saint Maur, at bacteria in a glass dish. A whole life he did not understand, formed and reformed. To the naked eye it was a smudge on the glass. This was why he was here: to sort out these mysteries. He sat absorbed, right there, on the old bench in the basement. It was a prayer, not a prayer, but prayer, he thought.

  ‘You’re still here.’ It was Benedict appearing quietly and suddenly. He was wearing his slippers.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t hear you. It’s this knot.’ Aelred kept his head down, almost believing that there was a knot to untie.

  ‘Let me see.’ Benedict’s voice, his care, made Aelred cry again.

  ‘No, it’s nothing.’ Aelred looked up.

  ‘What? You’re crying? What’s the matter? Let me look at it.’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter. There’s no knot. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve got to speak to you.’ Aelred was sobbing now.

  ‘Hush. Someone may still come down, though I think most people have gone out to the fields already. We must take care.’

  ‘So, you’ve been told?’

  ‘Yes, this morning.’

  ‘I know. I saw you going into the Abbot’s room then Father Justin coming out. I saw the Abbot this morning. What’s happening? What do they know?’

  Benedict could not resist wiping the tears away with his fingers. ‘Try and stop crying and then we can talk for a little while as I get my boots on. I’m late. We mustn’t walk down to the fields alone.’

  ‘Are we going to have to live like this all the time?’

  ‘We must show that there isn’t a special attachment between us. That’s what both Father Abbot and Father Justin are most concerned about, that we don’t show to others that there’s a special attraction between us. It’s as if they’ve accepted that there is. They would prefer that there wasn’t, but they realise that there is.’

  ‘And they think it must stop.’

  ‘We must be very particular. Our being together is going to be interpreted as being inappropriate, whatever our behaviour is like. So at least for a while we must stay apart.’

  ‘This is so hard. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do this.’

  ‘You must. You must think of me. You must think of your vocation.’

  ‘What exactly do they know about us?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Father Justin may have heard more than we thought in the library. He may have been noticing us and wondering for some time. But coupled with this is the reading of Aelred of Rievaulx. That has alerted them to the quality of our relationship. I’ve not told them anything that we’ve done, anything that is rightly a matter for confession.’

  ‘I’ll have to talk to Basil. Only he will understand.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Yes, but how will you help me now?’

  ‘I’m sorry. You must realise this is a great fear for superiors. It isn’t simple, what we’ve embarked on. Aelred of Rievaulx recognises these feelings, but he does insist that they become spiritual.’

  ‘He allows for holding hands.’

  ‘Yes, but we’ve done more than hold hands. We’ve kissed. He expressly speaks against the carnal kiss.’

  ‘Carnal - it sounds terrible.’

  ‘Come on, brother. I don’t think Father Justin will be allowing holding hands at recreation. We won’t see Father Abbot walking hand in hand with Brother Theodore or whoever. It’s not like that. You know that. It won’t happen. We mustn’t be naïve.’ Aelred began to see the funny side and he and Benedict began laughing and imagining possible couples among the community.

  ‘A farewell kiss?’ Aelred leant over and turned Benedict’s face to his and rested his lips gently on his.

  Benedict smiled. ‘Au revoir. Look at me when you need encouragement. We can hold it in our eyes. But be careful. It’s going to be harder than you imagine. We must go.’

  Benedict left first and Aelred followed a short while later. Near the bed with with the yellow roses Aelred saw Father Justin weeding. He felt policed. He felt guilty.

  Aelred was working on his own, solitary against the hillside. His confusion drew him into himself. But he had spotted Edward lower down the field. He had been concerned earlier, because he had not seen him at all. He knew that they had both been put down for haymaking duty. He wondered what had happened to him. It might take him out of himself, and his thoughts about Benedict and their problem with Father Justin and Father Abbot, if he worked with Edward and talked about learning to rock climb. He had no intention of rock climbing, but it might be distracting just to talk about it. Maybe this was a way to get to know Edward. Things might run more smoothly between them. The secret of Benedict and himself was becoming an obsession. It seemed to grow louder and louder in his mind, so that he thought all the community must know something about it. Maybe all sorts of little things had been noticed and interpreted. He felt guilty as he went along, dragging the heavy bales and waiting for the tractor to come and collect them.

  The monks elsewhere in the fields eventually broke from their haymaking to collect around the tractor to have tea, which Brother Crispin had brought out in a small urn on the back of the tractor with some of Brother Edwin’s fruit cake as a treat for their hard work. There was fresh milk from the dairy after the first milking.

  Benedict was among them. Aelred worked out that he had been detailed to work in the barn, making room for the new hay. That would mean that they might not be able to talk to each other again this afternoon. But he might, in the new natural way they must now be careful about, while mixing with their other brothers, catch a moment to speak.

  Such a moment came when Benedict was passing the cake around. ‘I wanted to say that I think you should try and meet up with Edward. He’s been talking to me about you and he wants to mend fences. He thinks there’s tension between you about silly things. Maybe some big things too, like changes in the church? Anyway, try and mix with him. It’s difficult being the new novice, as you ‘ll remember.’

  Aelred had a lot of questions in his head but he decided to just go along with Benedict’s suggestion. They were interrupted by Brother Crispin who was collecting up the mugs. ‘We’ve got a lot of hay to be bringing in, brothers.’

  As Benedict turned away to go back down to the barn in the farmyard, he said, ‘I must just have a quick word before we turn in this evening. I’ll be down at the barn. Try and come that way.’

  ‘Yes.’ Aelred tried to smile, to look normal about their communication. Yet it all seemed so furtive, so self-conscious.

  Edward had been the last to join the group having tea. He had hung back from the others, who had been chatting about the hot weather and the quality of the hay. Now the good news was that they might have to stay out longer, past the time for Vespers, because rain was expected the next day: they could not risk the new hay being soaked. This meant that they would work late into the evening, beyond Compline. Aelred was pleased by this. He felt that it would be stressful having to be back with the novitiate and the normal routines of the day. It would be a kind of holiday, a dies non, staying out late.

  The bell for Vespers had been
rung a long time ago. Now the community must be at supper. Aelred was exhausted with pushing himself. Then out of the haze which now hung over the fields, Brother Crispin arrived on the tractor to take him out of his exhaustion and daze. Riding at the back of the tractor was Edward. They had come to collect him to go down to the farm to work in the barn. Aelred kept his eyes averted. Yes, he should talk to Edward, as Benedict suggested, he thought. But now he felt more at peace within himself and he didn’t want to disturb that.

  At first Aelred thought that now he would be able to see Benedict, as he had suggested, before they turned in. But as they approached the farm, he saw Benedict walking up the hill to the abbey between the lime trees. He realised that he and Edward were relieving the monks who had been working all afternoon at the farm. They, he and Edward, were to take the last shift before darkness came and the last bales of hay were brought in before the rain. He suddenly realised that he would not be able to talk to Benedict. As soon as the tractor stopped, without thinking, he jumped off and literally ran up through the avenue of lime trees, calling, ‘Benedict, Benedict.’ He realised what it must have looked like to Brother Crispin and Edward, but he continued. Benedict stopped and looked around. Aelred was out of breath. ‘You said you wanted a quick word. And I’m to stay down in the barn.’

  Benedict pulled Aelred off the path into the shade of the lime trees. ‘Brother, this is not a good start. In front of everyone. I wanted to say this more quietly with time, but I expect you’re right. You’d realise soon enough.’

  ‘Realise what?’

  ‘I didn’t know how to say it earlier. The reason I was late this afternoon coming down to the basement was that I was having to move my things. Father Abbot has moved me to the senior’s dormitory, given that I’m not far off my profession. He thinks it would be better. He is concerned that our relationship is not the best preparation for my final vows. You would have realised going to my cell and finding it empty.’

  Aelred stood quietly looking out into the fields. ‘You would’ve let that happen? Let me go to your cell and find it empty? I see. I see.’ He turned and began walking back down to the farm.

  ‘Aelred,’ Benedict called. He met up with him. ‘I was going to stay up and look out for you. I thought I would do that. I’m sorry. It’s all got too much. I will find a way to meet you. Please, please take this as a sign that we need time apart. The Abbot is our superior. We must see in this God’s will. Go and see Basil. Talk to Basil.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Aelred let his hand brush against Benedict’s. ‘Yes, I will. I must get to the barn. They’ll be wondering what’s happened.’

  The rain clouds were already purple on the horizon in the late summer sunset. There was a cool breeze whipping up the valley.

  The barn was still warm. Aelred and Edward worked at stacking the bales, which the conveyor had dumped in a random way. At first they did not work according to any method, but struggled on their own.

  Now that they were together, Aelred could not talk. Stacking the bales took the place of talking. Aelred meditated. He noticed that Edward followed him with his eyes, hiding them when he thought he would be noticed. They worked hard till they had stacked all the bales that were brought in that night. ‘Let’s meet tomorrow in the common room after classes. Benedict thinks we should have a talk.’

  ‘Yes, I’d like that.’ Edward seemed uncharacteristically shy. Then he said, ‘Everything OK? You seem miles away.’

  ‘I’m tired, I suppose.’

  ‘We must get those boots for rock climbing.’ Edward smiled, trying to lighten the mood. Aelred tried to smile. He was tired.

  Afterwards, they walked separately, hooded, hands in the folds of their smocks, away from the farm. They walked in silence back to the abbey for supper. Then they went to the Abbot’s room to receive his blessing before bed.

  In bed, anticipating the early call for Matins, Aelred hoped that a new day would change everything.

  Aelred, the young Abbot of Rievaulx, woke earlier than the call for the vigils. He could feel the cold breath of the north in the woods about Rievaulx. The cold water of the River Rye flowed over the smooth rocks. Dark brown and green. Rust bled in the bubbling foam.

  He knew that he had no choice in what he should do about the raging fire that had woken him in a dream. This was a fire within him, the embers dying in his hearth. A raging fire had filled not only his mind and the wild images that played there, not only his dreams to wake him with their terror and their seduction, but also his loins. His dreams were of Simon, the young monk, who amazed him with his tenderness and delicacy, whose beauty enraptured him and who had accepted him as a friend. Though frail, the young man was zealous for the monastic life, in fasting, vigils and the discipline. He had heard the sound of the lashes coming from his cell. He imagined the welts on his back. He was a young man whose beauty had attracted him the first day he saw him, when he had first come to Rievaulx, requesting admittance as a novice.

  Aelred battled to hold this within his ideals of chastity, but the night woke him with the most sensual phantoms of this dear youth. They were phantoms he could not rid his mind of without the most extreme measures.

  He saw the writing on his back, the welts, the blue veins.

  He whipped himself. His monks heard and took example.

  In the midst of his flagellation the images appeared.

  The power of this seduction, the most beguiling of images, was Simon as the young boy Jesus at twelve when he was lost from his parents and found in the temple in Jerusalem. The boy was lost in the city. He ached with wanting to feed him fresh bread dipped in olive oil, to quench his thirst with red wine. He pined to prepare his bed with clean linens. He longed to take off his shoes, to wash and kiss his feet, to anoint them with fragrant perfumes. His longing held the boy Jesus, turning into Simon, naked in his warm bath scented with balsam. He wept with finding his lost one in the city. He hung upon his neck kisses, a necklace of red roses. He drank the blood-red wine that flowed from the roses on his ivory neck.

  His dream was all feeling, a feeling to save the young Jesus from his lostness. When he held the boy in his arms, he turned into the delicate Simon whose mouth was as sweet as all the kisses in the Song of Songs, which tasted of pomegranates. His cheeks were dusty like plums. His breasts, where he put his hand under the coarse wool of his habit, soft, the nipples growing hard as nuts in his fingers. He heard the words of the Song of Solomon: ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.’ In his dream, he kissed Simon’s lips with his full mouth and the kisses of the youth were from lips of scarlet, purple as the grapes from the vineyards on the hillsides of hot countries. He smelt of the fragrance and perfume of incense, a field of lilies, an acolyte of the choir, a server at the altar. His woollen habit flowed like a flock of sheep over a green hillside, the lace of his surplice frothing like the gush of water over the rocks of the River Rye.

  He was a shepherd’s boy, a shepherd himself; the boy Jesus, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth with a cross as his staff.

  He felt under the wool for his belly, a sheath in a heap of wheat.

  He was one whose skin was as smooth as skin which is oiled to prevent it from the cracks of the heat. He took his hand to run into those hillsides growing crimson with the vines where the grapes are poured out. They ran where the henna flowers grew among the vines of Engedi. He pursued him with a passion as nervous as a young deer, with the agility of a gazelle. He ravished him on a bank of lilies by the pool of Heshbon, by a pool of milk. They lost themselves on the hillside where the shepherds’ flocks leave their tracks for the summit of Amana, the crests of Senir and Hermon, dangerous with lions and leopards. He hears his voice asking, ‘Tell me then, you whom my heart loves: where will you lead your flock to graze, where will you rest it at noon?’ In the wild, like vagabonds, they wandered. In the dream, they tumbled and coupled like young chestnut horses whose cheeks were as smooth as the cheeks of the horses that drew the Pharaoh’s chariot.

&
nbsp; Then they were young men together again, best friends, with a love for each other, as Jonathan had for David.

  The dangerous text which the Abbot had banned from the novitiate to protect his young monks had already possessed the deepest layers of their being. ‘Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that is uttered from the mouth of God.’

  The Lodge:

  5 November 1984

  There is a strange synchronicity in all this, a macabre pattern, a common impulse: denial, punishment, death. The pattern becomes compelling.

  Something else was afoot. I heard them planning. The sense of threat was tangible. I said nothing. I could’ve gone and reported something. What would I report? How would I talk about it? I was expecting it to be at night. But it was in the middle of the afternoon, hot, blinding light. The seniors didn’t have games that Saturday. I remember it so vividly now, the noise, running feet on the bottom corridors. A roar of boys! I had detention in the study hall. The prefect in charge left to go and see what was happening. We were all out on the corridor hanging over the parapets, looking down into the playground. A ringside view. Ted and J. M. were being pursued by what seemed like twenty seniors. It was wild. They had taken off from the playground and had disappeared down the path which led to the bush, past the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, and which eventually led into the hills behind the college. We could not see anything. It became very silent. The prefect returned and the detention continued. I kept my head down. I could not imagine what was going on.

  ‘Ave, ave, ave Maria …’ Even now, our hymns plait themselves in incongruously.

  There was a high wind, which howled and rattled the windows. Parrots screamed. Then the silence and the scratch of pens on paper continued. Lines: I must not talk in chapel, five hundred times.

  Once when I looked up, the boy in front of me turned around and signalled with his hand and fingers, flicking them so they made a clicking noise, indicating that Ted and J. M. were getting what was coming to them, what they deserved.