The Beautiful Thread

by Penelope Wilcock

  “Are you harbouring here William de Bulmer?” His eyes, narrowed into gimlet points of light, bored into Father Francis with an inquisitorial intensity that would evidently have no truck with any equivocation.

  “H-h-here?” Francis scanned the modest room in apparent mystification.

  “In. This. Monastery.” Through gritted teeth.

  “But… Well, yes, we did…” Francis played for time. “We – I thought you knew, my lord. He was with us a whole year. He… It was after the great fire at St Dunstan’s. He begged admittance – we took him in – but he –”

  “Don’t you play the fool with me!” The bishop glared, irate, at St Alcuin’s prior. “Of course I know he was here. Of course I know he left. I know all about him. It’s high time the consequences of his actions caught up with that man. He was a crooked, poisonous good-for-nothing since the roots of forever. But I gather he’s contracted a marriage and attempted a suicide since last I clapped eyes on him. Before he’s hanged for the felony of the second he wants excommunicating on account of the first. And, by God, if you’re hiding him here I shall track him down because I mean to do business with him. Well? Is he here?”

  At these words, something in Father Francis appeared to withdraw. Where a moment before he had seemed flustered, calm came over him now. He looked steadily at his interlocutor.

  “Father William left us in the winter,” he responded quietly. “Where he went, I cannot say. His whereabouts at the present time, I do not know. I cannot imagine who could have spread such a rumour of suicide. I am so sorry, your Lordship. I’m afraid I cannot help you.”

  For a long, roiling moment the bishop fixed Francis with his furious, silent glare.

  “No?” he said then. “Well no doubt you will be happy for me to take a poke around for myself. Snap to it, LePrique. Let’s run this fox to earth.”

  Out in the abbey court, his equerry close at his heels, the bishop paused and looked slowly about him in the sunshine.

  “Well, well, well…” He spoke with soft satisfaction as his gaze fell upon the white hair of a thin man dressed in merchant’s garb, but walking with the distinctive quiet tread of a monk, along the front of the west range that faced onto the greensward, towards the abbot’s door. With the instinct of the watched, the man turned his head and glanced back over his shoulder. Realizing himself to be under keenest surveillance, he changed course, retracing a pace or two, ducking in through the door that led into the frater.

  “Taille haut!” murmured the bishop; and set off in pursuit with a celerity LePrique would have estimated entirely beyond him.

  The two men hurried across the court and into the refectory, deserted at the present time. They wove through the gaps between tables to cross the room and take the door into the cloister. There they paused, looking to right and left; which was when the equerry, glancing up the day stairs, caught a glimpse of their quarry disappearing.

  William swore in silent fluency as he heard the first footfall on the wooden staircase. Fleet as a deer he slipped by the novitiate and the scriptorium, into the dorter. Now where? He noted without pausing, a second heavy set of feet added to the treading and squeak of the stairs. He passed the first three doors in the long corridor. Then, judging his time had run out, he made himself go slowly enough to lift the latch of the fourth door in silence. Slipping round the door into the cell, closing it noiselessly behind him, he turned to behold Father Chad, kneeling at his prie-dieu, gaping up at him in utter astonishment.

  “Wh – ? What have you done to your eye?”

  William raised his finger to his lips in warning, entreaty in his eyes, and Father Chad rose to his feet in bewildered silence, the question dying before he uttered it.

  “I beg you, for God’s sake, hide me,” said William in swift undertone.

  Father Chad closed his dropped jaw to frame the word “Where?”

  But William, reaching down to whip the scourge out from under the low wooden bed – and Father Chad took a hasty step back – got down onto the floor and began to ease himself with all speed into the impossibly narrow space beneath the bed. Father Chad boggled.

  “One of the many benefits of being skeletally thin,” murmured William as he disappeared from view, pulling the scourge back under the bed after him. His face, grim and pale but for the livid purple of his bruised eye, glaring with its feral stare at Father Chad, was the last thing the monk beheld as, “Chad! Back to your prayers!” the spectre breathed in desperate urgency before disappearing entirely from view as the latch rattled and the door opened again – this time with considerable éclat.

  “Where is he?” demanded the equerry, the bishop puffing in his wake, his face red-swollen with rage.

  “Wh-who, my lord?” quavered the mild-faced monk, rising once more from his knees to face the invasion. “Me?”

  He wondered whether he was supposed to be smiling, but somehow this didn’t seem to be the moment.

  “Where have you hidden him?”

  Father Chad was a simple, honest man, not given to subterfuge or guile. His genuine stupefaction at unfolding events still registered in his shocked face as he gave the best performance he could muster.

  “Where could I… who?...” He stared at them as the equerry pressed his point. “Under the bed? Is he under the bed?”

  The bishop dismissed the suggestion with a snort of derision, but he did nonetheless stoop down to see. The floor was a long way down and kneeling uncomfortable for a man of some avoir du poids, so he made do with leaning one hand on the scratchy blanket covering the hard mattress, groping with the other into the dark space below the bed. He pulled out the scourge as it offered itself to him, and flung it to one side, pushing upright. In the baffled, angry silence that followed, no sound was heard but the two men breathing hard. A bishop does not like to be made to look foolish.

  “It seems you were wrong.” His chill tone added to the equerry’s frustration.

  “He went along here! He did,” he insisted. “I saw him as I came to the top of the stair!” He pushed past Father Chad to the narrow casement window, latched open on this warm summer afternoon. “Did he get out this way? Did he?”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” expostulated his Lordship, getting irritable now. “You’ve made a mistake, Brainard. Just face it. We’re wasting time. He’s probably halfway to the stables by now.”

  Father Chad, looking from one to the other, his hands clasped at chest level, his face wan with anxiety and all thoughts of smiling forgotten, ventured: “If – if you could tell me who you were looking for, I might be able to help.”

  The bishop looked with calculating penetration at this timid monk. Was he capable of deception? Probably not. “William de Bulmer,” he said heavily. “Is he here? In this abbey, I mean. Obviously not in this cell.”

  “He…” Chad’s features puckered into a small, worried frown. Lying was wrong. How could he do this? “William de Bulmer was certainly a member of our community, my lords. But he left us.”

  Father Chad visibly quailed as Bishop Eric fixed upon him full attention.

  “We have reason to believe,” the bishop said slowly and deliberately, “that he is back. The rumour has reached me that he is married – to a woman.” His equerry nodded in agreement at this, also fixing his eyes on Father Chad. And he wasn’t smiling either. “I have also heard a whisper that during his time here, he tried to take his own life. Such a man should be first excommunicated, then publicly flogged, then hanged. He is an execrable, repulsive transgressor, saturated with sin, and it is high time somebody caught up with him and brought his reprehensible career to an end. Don’t you think?”

  Coldly observant, Bishop Eric watched for the monk’s reaction. Father Chad licked his lips. Why? Why did people choose to be so cruel? Was not life already hard enough? Did not each day have trouble enough of its own, without the introduction of a manhunt? Bishop Eric and his equerry both held him in their stare of accusation. They had to find some vindication for the
invasion of this cell, a compensation mitigating the humiliating withdrawal of simple failure.

  Father Chad saw that some kind of response was awaited, and one that would meet the expectation of their outrage.

  “Father W-William…” he stuttered. “Well – th-that is to say – if you tell me he’s married, I suppose he’s not Father William any more. William, then. But he – are you sure he is married? He… Well, who would marry Father William? He was not a very personable… I mean… I think ladies would not… He could be a little bit gruff. But –” The bishop was beginning to turn away in impatience. Clearly this pusillanimous monastic had no light to shed. Still, he waited to hear where Father Chad’s “But” might lead.

  “But this I can tell you,” Father Chad persevered, lowering his gaze before the intimidation of theirs, his clasped hands sweating: “whoever told you Father William was a malefactor, had him wrong. I don’t know if he got married after he left here. When somebody leaves, we no longer discuss them. They are dead to us. It is true he had an accident up on the farm during his time with us, but he was loved in this monastery. He was a trustworthy man, a good man. Humble. God-fearing. Why ever should such a one have wanted to hang himself? It must have been a mistake, an accident, that’s all. He didn’t want to die. No one ever clung to life with such tenacity.”

  The eyes he slowly raised to ascertain the effect of his speech on the silent men were full of dread. He did what he could to stiffen his shaking legs. He felt dizzy.

  “Brainard,” said the bishop, “let’s go. You hear me, Father Whoever-you-are – Cedd, is it? Oh, Chad. Well, you hear me. If that miscreant shows his face in this abbey, I will find him. And when I do, he will answer for all his filthy sin and faithless wickedness – not to me and to the ecclesiastical court only, but to Christ his judge. That man’s days are numbered. I won’t be made a fool of, not by him or any man – and certainly not by you.”

  “Oh, my lord!” Chad’s consternation was genuine. But the bishop offered him no reassurance. With a scathing glare and a curl of the lip, the equerry fixed Chad one last time before following his superior out of the room. It seemed that the smiling days had finished. Father Chad stood motionless, his head cocked, listening to their corpulent tread descending the stair. Then he let his breath out in a sigh, crossed the room and closed his cell door again.

  He bent down and picked up his scourge, stood holding it loosely in his hands as he watched William’s sinuous and cautious emergence from under the bed. Wearily, the execrable, repulsive transgressor pushed himself up to kneeling, to standing, and (with the eye still available to him) met Father Chad’s gaze.

  “Trustworthy?” he said, after a moment. “Good?”

  The monk moved his head, his hand, in a slight indication of diffidence. “I know, I know. I believed it at the time.”

  William, catching the twinkle in his eye, appreciated for the first time that Father Chad had a sense of humour.

  “Cobwebs and dust on your clothes,” murmured the monk, reaching out to brush them away. Then he looked William square in the face. “I expect it’ll be safe for you to go now,” he said, “but I ought to own up: you’ve been on my conscience, ever since you left. It didn’t take long before it dawned on me, we – well, I – missed an opportunity. I hope this changes things. I hope we may be friends from now on.”

  Under William’s small grin, Chad saw the etching still of tiredness and fear. “I’ll add you to my mental list of Men in this Monastery who have Saved my Life,” William answered him. “And of course, yes – I am honoured to be considered your friend.”

  He turned to go then, but paused as he reached the door. “Look – you may not understand – I want you to know – all I ever, ever wanted was a peaceful life… security… shelter from the storm… for things to be comfortable, and… safe. But… well, it was such a struggle to get to that. I had to fight for it, tooth and nail. But I’m sorry – truly, I’m sorry, Father Chad – if you were one of the many who got bitten and scratched along the way.”

  Father Chad nodded, then drew breath with a certain resolve. William looked at him in enquiry. Father Chad hesitated, unsure in this mood of new bonding whether he should say what he wanted to, or just let it go. But William was waiting.

  “I am glad we have put the past behind us,” said the monk, averting his gaze, embarrassed at what he planned to say.“But…”

  A certain tension entered William’s entire demeanour as he braced himself for whatever this might be.

  Father Chad ploughed bravely on. “Even so I must admit, Father William – at least… er… well – William – that it might be a wise course to take – for all of us, for you as well as us in the community – if after this you maybe don’t come here any more. I know you mean your interventions kindly, but… before you came… Before… Until… Oh dear… A bishop’s Visitation used to be a simple, uneventful, encouraging experience.” He waved his hand desperately, feeling William’s gaze upon him, watching, not moving. “Surely you must see –” there was no accusation in his pleading tone – “trouble always follows you.”

  He did not – could not – look at William, which was just as well because, if he had, he would have taken the wooden impassivity his words brought to the other’s face as stubborn sullenness, hostility. For one moment they both stood unmoving; then, “I understand,” said William softly. “I hear you.” He latched the cell door quietly behind him as he left.

  Edged as close to the stone wall as he could get beneath Father Chad’s low wooden bed, flat on his back, unable in the shallow space even to turn his throbbing head sideways, refusing the rising panic of claustrophobia, William had waited. It had occurred to him in the close prison of his meagre refuge that human history was peppered with terrified men cramped in choking hiding places desperate to escape discovery by their fellow human beings. He would not even look at the visceral wound left by Chad’s plea that he leave and never return. It felt too painful, and he thought he’d better deal with it later, in some safe and private place. Wondering what it would be like to live in a world where people simply accepted and understood, he trod cautiously along the passage out from the dorter, every nerve strained for warning signs of human presence. But he was alone. As he went warily down the stairs to the cloister, he noted that his legs and belly felt weak, shaky. “Pull yourself together,” he instructed himself silently, and gave thanks for an empty cloister as – keeping to the shadowed side by the wall, away from the light from the garth – he walked along it to the abbot’s door. There he listened one moment lest there be voices within, before knocking.

  * * *

  “You’ve got a visitor.”

  Abbot John swung round, but saw no one awaiting his attention. “Where?”

  “In your chamber,” Brother Tom explained. “I think he’s in trouble again. He wouldn’t say.”

  With a quick frown of puzzlement, the abbot crossed the room and went through into his chamber.

  “Oh, God save us,” he said, taking in the black eye, the tired, strained face, the dusty clothes, as William, sitting on the floor in the far corner of the room with his back to the wall, regarded him in silence. “What now?”

  William shrugged, stayed where he was. As the abbot entered the room, the reflexes of William’s muscles had bidden him stand; but he no longer belonged to this community or owed his brother-in-law the respect of his fealty.

  “I don’t know how word has reached his Lordship of my personal history,” he said, his voice flat and despondent, “but he wants me excommunicated, thrashed and strung up – and perhaps for entertainment they’d like to tear off my fingernails or slit me open and wind out my entrails on a bobbin. Who knows? It is the felony of my attempted suicide that has so upset him – and how did he hear of that? Besides my desertion of my monastic vows, of course.”

  John listened to this in silence and stillness. William nodded in affirmation of the horror on his face. “I think you might shut the door,” he co
ntinued, “because that’s not all.”

  John turned back to the door and put his head round it. “Tom, I am not here,” he said.

  “Even to the bishop?”

  “No – especially to the bishop. I am not here.”

  He withdrew into his bedchamber, and sat on the floor beside his friend, still moving carefully, and avoiding resting his back against the wall. “What else, then? Who hit you?”

  William turned his wry grin towards the abbot. “I got between Brother Cormac’s knuckles and their intended destination,” he said. “I thought it best the bishop’s equerry not be laid out cold in the checker. It had better be me.”

  John’s mouth dropped ajar, and William began to laugh.

  “Oh, my life!” the abbot exclaimed. “William, this isn’t funny! For heaven’s sake, what are we going to do?”

  “About Cormac? Yes? Well, my counsel is that you make a big show of locking him up in your prison, full of expostulation and lurid declarations of how you’ll flay him to ribbons just as soon as your busy schedule gives you space to put your mind to it. Tell ’em it’ll do him good to go hungry in the cold and damp dark, contemplating the blood and pain and violence of the drubbing you mean to put him through. Surely the bishop can’t stay here forever – there must be other monastery larders for him to empty somewhere in the ridings of Yorkshire.”

  “But… if Cormac’s out of action, who’s going to oversee all the provisions and paraphernalia of this confounded wedding?”

  “I am, you numpty. I’ll just stay out of sight.”

  John gazed ahead at nothing, chewing his lip, weighing this in silence.

  “You… William, how could I ask it of you? I’d never forgive myself if they found you.”

  “Find me? I hope I’ve not lost my touch that badly. I’ve been dodging someone’s wrath and malevolence the whole of my life. It’s all I’m good for.”

  John sat quietly and thought, recalling to his mind the weariness in William’s taut face but five minutes before. Resilient, he thought; and brave.