The Hour Before Dawn

by Penelope Wilcock

  Brother Thomas brought the old chestnut mare from the stable to the mounting block and tethered her loosely to the iron ring, while William led his grey palfrey out to a nearby hitching post.

  “Father Abbot looks grim,” Tom remarked. “He didn’t touch his breakfast; but he’s hell-bent on going to Motherwell.”

  “Did he not? Well, he should have. It’s twenty miles to Motherwell. I have some bread and cheese and apples in our pack, and he’ll eat that at midday if his appetite returns or not. It’s a downward spiral otherwise.”

  Tom nodded. “Hunger and grief affect people in similar ways. Still, Michael’s had a look at him and had a chat with him, made him have a wash and a shave and brought him back into some semblance of normal reality.” He looked thoughtfully at William. “You don’t look so grand yourself now I come to think on it. Are you all right?”

  William was in the middle of shrugging this off as Tom’s fancy when he stopped himself and said, “No.” Tom smiled at this sudden breakthrough of honesty. “What’s amiss?”

  “Nothing more than the usual terrors. I feel safer within the abbey walls. I was on the verge of asking him to find another travelling companion, but when it came to it, I hadn’t the heart to refuse.”

  “You?” Tom looked at him, teasing, affectionate. “I didn’t know you had any kind of heart.”

  It was a measure of the distance these two men had travelled in their understanding of each other, laying old enmity to rest, that Tom could trust this gibe to be taken in good part.

  “Thank you very much,” came the sardonic reply. The exchange was not trifling, nor as superficial as it seemed. Tom knew reassurance would be needed that he took no offense from John’s preference to travel with another brother. As his esquire, Brother Thomas would be the natural and obvious candidate; their abbot’s choice of William—neither his prior nor his esquire—as his companion, needed a reason. Tom and William both knew the only reason was that in his present state of mind it was William’s company John needed, and Tom wanted William to know he understood and bore no grudge. His expression of concern and the teasing jest that went with it let William know they were still friends. William’s disclosure to Tom of the vulnerability of his fear was a sign of reciprocal goodwill. The exchange seemed slight enough, but this was the currency of trust. Community cannot be built without the patient attention to the layering of such reassurances.

  Brother Michael came walking across the abbey court with Abbot John, passing him into Tom’s good care. John was but a shadow of his usual self. Even so he mounted his horse well enough, and Tom unhitched the reins and handed them up to him. William, sitting elegant and easy on his palfrey, had their pack of food for the journey, along with money for hospitality in Motherwell and any other necessity that should arise.

  Having slept soundly through the night, John had awoken that morning with almost no recollection of how the day before had gone. He had been in his stall for Prime and presided as usual at the morrow Mass. Brother Tom thought there was no getting around it, he did look undeniably rough. But he was functional now, which was more than could have been said of him the day before. As he rode out with William, he seemed withdrawn and low in spirits but calmer. Tom saw the shrewd appraising glance with which William assessed his companion’s well-being and knew that John would be in trustworthy custody.

  “God keep you safe, both,” Tom whispered under his breath as he watched them go. “God shield you and travel with you. Come home restored to peace, Father John.”

  As their abbot went beyond the walls into the world, his community held him in their hearts and kept watch. They did not discuss or speculate, but their prayers brooded over him. There was work to be done, as always, but with the abbot away, his esquire found himself restless and at a loose end.

  “Not often in the time I have known you would I have accused you of thinking,” said Father Francis as he sat down beside Brother Thomas on the grass of the riverbank, “but I have to admit, you do look pensive now. Is something wrong, or are you just worried about our abbot?”

  “No. I was fine. I was perfectly content, sitting here by myself.” Tom glanced at Francis. “Actually, that just sounds rude, doesn’t it? My attempt at humour. Sorry.”

  Francis laughed. Together they sat and watched the crystal water of the river’s flow—flashing silver as it tumbled over stones this high in the hills, gathering in little brown-gold pools in still spaces here and there in the lee of craggy rocks.

  “D’you think we maybe have too many rules?” Tom asked suddenly.

  Francis turned this question over in his mind. “We have one Rule, don’t we? A way of life. To help us channel all the turbulence of what we are into something more constructive. That’s what religion is.”

  “Yes…” answered Tom slowly. “I suppose so.” He picked up a small stone and flicked it high, watched the arc of it falling into the bright water, where it sent a small spurt of shining splashes as it hit the surface.

  “But when I was a lad,” he said, “I mean, right up to the day I entered here, I would have stripped off my clothes and gone for a swim on a day like this. In the fishpond or the lake or where the river widens out as it comes into the valley. I would have got up at first light, while the mist still lay on the water, and dived in. I remember it, the amber gold of the water with the sun shining through it. Geese swimming on the lake, fish jumping, the sunrise reflecting. It felt beautiful. So alive. And then I never did it again. When would I? Every minute is spoken for. As the sun rises, we’re in prayers or only just coming out. If we’ve finished Prime, it’ll be only minutes before Mass is starting. The morning is all for work. The afternoon you can never be sure there won’t be stray visitors wandering about. Everything is accounted for. Every thought is turned to prayer, every moment to industry; no wild places left. No space to play. No nakedness, no glory in what we are and how God made us. Everything is so relentlessly… proper. Nothing gets to be itself. It’s all on purpose, patiently espaliered into the correct lines of growth for a good monk.”

  “Is… is that a problem?” Francis screwed up his eyes against the afternoon sun to see his friend’s face.

  “Well… you know… I guess not. Living and loving in formation. Remembering not to laugh too loud, not to whistle a tune once the Great Silence has begun. Not to love the wrong person or love too much or love too little or in the wrong way.” He felt for another pebble in the earth and flicked it into the stream.

  “Love?” said Francis softly. “Who?”

  Tom laughed. “Don’t you worry. I haven’t lost my heart to a wench in the village. It feels strange though now—being John’s esquire after being Father Peregrine’s. It’s the same, and it’s all different. Waiting at table, sweeping the house, making sure his washing gets put out and brought back, fetching his firewood, bringing refreshments for his guests. Same shape to the job. But I’m not to him what I was to Father Peregrine. We get on well enough, but… it was William he needed at his side when these bad tidings came; it wasn’t me. I’m not who he turns to when he needs someone. And why should I be? I don’t mind that. He’ll be a good abbot if he ever gets a chance between one disaster and another. I’m right behind him; I think he’s great. And don’t get me wrong, he’s been good to me. But… how it was with Father Peregrine… it made sense of my vocation. Was it wrong? Was it a ‘particular friendship’? I can’t say. Father Chad thought it was. There were those years of travelling along with him that seemed to ask everything of me. He had such power about him, such fire. And such faith. What was in him was enough for both of us somehow. Then when he died, the agony of that parting tore me up so I could hardly think of anything else for a long time. Then we elected John, and off he went to university that year… came back… asked me to be his esquire, and why would I not? And now I’m just… bored or something. Life has lost its flavour. I want to go skinny-dipping. I want to go to bed with a woman. I want to laugh as loud as I like and drink too much and eat ro
ast ox and remember what it felt like to be alive. Don’t you know what I mean?”

  Francis sighed. “In one way, yes; of course I do. We all get that spring evening restlessness, don’t we? And we all get those gaps between the movements of life when the dance stops and everything stands still for a while. But I quite like ‘boring’. I think it has its merits. What you described sounds vivid and exciting and fun, but that’s not every chapter in the book, is it? Some of those men you spoke about, laughing loud and stuffing themselves with roast ox and downing ale by the yard, ended up raping John’s sister and killing his mother—and personally I’d rather put up with being bored every now and then and live by a Rule that offers something better. William de Bulmer flouted every rule in the Rule, it would seem, and what happened to him? They set his house on fire. And where did he come running for sanctuary when that happened? Here, where the men are boring and apply their thoughts to the drearier things like forgiving each other and healing and turning again and again to prayer if they feel like it or not. I think I could put up with quite a lot of that kind of boring. What you’re talking about is good fun until someone gets hurt.

  “And it’s the same with going to bed with a woman; that’s fine, but if it’s an honest, real relationship, not just using her, you have to marry the woman. And the same woman that took your breath away one May evening when the bluebells were shining in the dusky woods is the nagging old harridan with stringy grey hair and dugs down to her navel and no teeth, who gave you six brats you had to work your whole life to keep in porridge and shoes without holes. And are you going to tell me it would never have crossed your mind that might grow boring after twenty years of it went by? At least here when the Great Silence falls everybody has to shut up finally, which is not the lot of married men, from all I’ve heard.”

  “You’ve converted me,” said Brother Tom with a grin. “I want to be a monk.”

  “Aye, good! I’m pleased to hear it. And just to rub your nose in it, it’s seemed to me that Father John hasn’t looked too bored with life these last couple of days. That’s one of the alternatives to being bored you might have wanted a taste of.”

  “Thinking before I speak was never the crowning glory of my virtues,” said Tom penitently. “I hear you. And I’m grateful enough for what we have. It’s just…”

  “Look, Brother, do you really think that if you slip out after Prime for a dip in the fishpond anyone will miss you at Mass or care if they do? Take a towel from the lavatorium and go for it, my friend. This is a way of life, not a ball and chain in prison! You’re the abbot’s esquire; he’s away for a few days—why not?”

  “Truly? You think I could? And you a priest of the church? Well, and I might just do that if I’m still chafing to be free in the morning. In the meantime I promised Thaddeus I’d help him dig some clay.”

  Chapter Two

  Small and comfortless, spotlessly clean, the parlour had been furnished with nothing at all except two stools.

  Perhaps once a year the family of a Poor Clare might visit her; and when they did, the meeting would take place in this austere divided room. A door led into it from the convent side, and a door from the externs’ lodge and the guest house, on the side of the world. In the wall that divided the room exactly across the centre, a rectangular space four feet wide and three feet high made communication between the sisters and their visitors possible, but the iron railings that barred the space set limitations to every encounter. In many enclosed communities, the grille was curtained as well as barred. In this house they contented themselves with the railings; they were not more brazen than other religious women, but they were short of money for linen.

  John and William waited in silence for their requested audience with Madeleine, seated on the two stools made ready for them in the centre of their half of the parlour. William felt cautiously pleased with the condition in which he had managed to escort his superior to this meeting. The familiarity of saying Mass and the office, and the small amount of food William had coaxed him into eating when they stopped at midday, had restored a measure of equilibrium to John’s shattered soul. On the journey to Motherwell, William had left John to his thoughts only a little while; then he had drawn him expertly and gracefully into conversation, eased him into discussing matters of little moment but of interest and diversion. By the time they arrived at the monastery of Poor Clares, his abbot had recovered a considerable measure of self-possession and was looking forward with impatience to seeing his sister. He loved her. They had always been the best of friends. Over the years he had been at St Alcuin’s, naturally a greater distance had developed between them; sometimes he had felt that she withheld from him thoughts she might once have spoken, but that seemed inevitable since they no longer lived under the same roof, sharing the warp and woof of every day. It was part of growing up. People drifted apart. Even still, he and she had ever been glad to see one another; he had always contemplated his little family’s visits to St Alcuin’s with eagerness.

  As the door opened and his sister came into the room on the convent side, John rose to his feet and went to the grille. She wore the brown habit of a Poor Clare and a postulant’s veil.

  “Madeleine—” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m just so very sorry.”

  He put his hand through the bars to her. Though she glanced at his hand, she did not come across to the grille but sat down on the stool on her side of the room, her eyes lowered.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said again, his voice shaking.

  Then Madeleine stared at him, remote, composed, very pale. “Yes,” she replied, “no doubt it would never have happened if you had been there.”

  Silence followed these words. Blindly, John stepped back from the grille and sank down on the stool provided for him on the visitors’ side of the parlour. He could find no means of addressing this response. Neither did William speak. In silence he observed the depth of John’s distress; then his eyes turned to contemplate the woman who had caused it.

  Eventually Madeleine said, “Well, it was good of you to come. I’m glad you came.” But her voice had no colour and no sincerity; the sentiment was produced by determined application to duty. Reverend Mother had said she must come and do this. She was trying her best.

  John got up again and went back to the grille. Gripping the bars, he pressed his face against the railings, to be as close to her as enclosure permitted. “Madeleine—” he whispered. “Please…”

  Her careful composure broke apart, and her head jerked up sharply. She fixed John’s eyes with hers. She stopped trying to be what she had set herself to be and became simply herself. Her evident anger hit him like a hard slap in the face.

  “What?” she demanded, in sudden concentrated fury. “What can I do? What can I say? Our house was burned. Five men raped me. Mother died in the fire. She was terrified and alone. We had no one to defend us. What do you want me to say? That it’s all right? That it’s over now? It will never be over. It will never be all right again. I died with Mother—and just as alone! What you see here now is a body that inconveniently lived. When I am professed, they will give me a new name; and it will be the name of this body that has no soul. Whoever Madeleine was is dead. And, yes, it would have been different if you had been there.”

  Gripped by the glaring fury of her red-rimmed eyes sunken in the pallor of her face, John stood, his knuckles bloodless as he hung onto the railings, his knees trembling, absorbing the savage power of her accusation. He had no thoughts about it. It was bigger than thoughts. It overwhelmed him. By his absence, by his preoccupation with his own vocation, he had done this, it seemed. He was responsible. That this might be true appalled him, shook him to the foundations of his soul. Had the flames, the violence, the coarse laughter, the lewd brutality, and lonely terror proceeded from the all-involving obedience of the abbacy, his full and overflowing round of duty, work, and prayer? What he had chosen had seemed holy, devout, and Christ committed, but out of it, this had come.

  “I
am so sorry,” he whispered. “Please, sister, please forgive me.”

  The brief flare of anger had subsided. She had very little energy for it; it soon drained her. Now her eyes, large in her ghostly face, with none of the old laughter in them anymore, looked at him as if he were a stranger, as if she had lost the language of family and love.

  “Sister?” Her tone was flat and dull now. “Yes. I will be a sister of this house. Here I will learn to forgive. I shall learn the rules that will school what was my heart until it can find a way to forgive you.”

  John bent his head, resting his brow against the cold iron of the railing. A nun? Madeleine? He found this hard to take in. His mind was beaten senseless, shocked beyond rational thought. Even so, her intention filled him with foreboding. He well knew religious vocation to be an uphill road that asks everything, not a healing refuge for a torn soul. The peace and safe harbour a religious house may offer those visitors who take refuge there is won at the cost of hard daily discipline and dogged turning away from the peevish demands of self, on the part of the community who have made it their home. He knew his own state of mind offered little of rational assessment right now, but he judged his sister to be in no fit state for joining anything.