The Hour Before Dawn

by Penelope Wilcock

  “Oh, yes,” said William softly, with perfect conviction. As Mother Mary Beatrix met his eyes she remembered where she’d heard his name before: the Augustinian, the St Dunstan’s fire. William, seeing the sudden kindling of comprehension, heartily regretted giving her his name; he wondered how it was that enclosed nuns invariably had such an uncanny knack of keeping up-to-date with everyone else’s news.

  Mother Mary Beatrix saw the slow flush of colour in William’s face and lowered her eyes discreetly, giving him a moment to recover.

  “Rest assured, Father John, Father William, we shall lead Madeleine gently.” The novice mistress spoke for the first time, her voice slow and soft and kind. William believed her, and John raised his head to look at her. “Thank you,” he said. “Of your charity, would you take us to where my mother is buried, good sisters?”

  The abbess rose to her feet, and the novice mistress immediately followed her example.

  “Sister Mary Cuthbert will not be far away if you care to go through into the passageway. She will open the door to the enclosure for you, and we will take you to the burial ground.”

  William went to look. As soon as he lifted the latch to the parlour door, Sister Mary Cuthbert, who had been waiting on the occasion of their needing her, appeared in the clean-swept and empty passageway watched over by a statue of Our Lady, cloaked in peaceful blue, her face sweet and simple, the infant Christ held protected in the carved wood of her arms.

  “Dear Mother had thought you might be wanting to go in to see our burial ground.” Sister Mary Cuthbert’s cheerful and rosy face beheld him soberly, clouded by her concern as she heard the request to admit them to the enclosure.

  William found himself moved by a sudden impulse of intense gratitude. “I think we owe you a great deal,” he said. “Without your hospitality and care, my lord abbot’s sister would have been alone in her trouble. Thank you for what you have done for her, for my abbot, for his mother. Thank you for seeing that she had the dignity of Christian burial. It would not have been pretty to have to search for her in whatever remains of her home. We are grateful, Sister, more than I have words to express.”

  “Oh!” She smiled, waving aside all thanks. “It was nothing, nothing at all; God bless you, it was the least that we could do.”

  William shook his head. “No; it was not ‘nothing’. And we shall not forget. You will pray for my lord abbot, won’t you? This has hurt him badly. He is new to the abbacy. It is a steep path his feet are finding.”

  “Father, we are holding him in prayer every day. As I sit with my work in my hands, in every stitch I make, I am sewing John Hazell into the wounded side of Christ crucified with sturdy linen thread. All shall be well. The sacred heart of Jesus will be his shelter.”

  William bent his head in appreciative acquiescence. Behind him the door opened, and John joined them in the passageway.

  “Let me show you the way,” said Sister Mary Cuthbert. “Follow me.”

  Conscious at every step of the delicacy and kindness of these sisters, William observed the dread and distress in his superior’s face as Mother Mary Beatrix and Mother Mary Brigid led them out past the claustral buildings, past the infirmary and up the steep path to the burial ground. While Mother Mary Beatrix sustained a gentle flow of inconsequential words to lighten the grim miasma of horror overshadowing their walk up the hillside, Mary Brigid contented herself with silence as she walked behind the other three. And William could feel her praying for them.

  As he watched John fall onto his knees beside the new mound of earth and the simple wooden cross, the cascading larksong and clear blue of this May day seemed to William otherworldly, mocking in its brightness. John did not pray. He wept.

  William and the two nuns waited in patient, respectful silence; even to them, used as they were to the slow chanting of psalms and intoned pages from the martyrology, it seemed a very long time before John staggered to his feet again and turned to face them.

  “She was burned,” he said, “burned, choked, terrified! How could they? How could anybody do this to her? She was wise and gentle. She was a healer. Her hands stretched out to help, to bring peace, wherever people were frightened or in pain. Why would you—why would anybody want… why?” He shook his head in slow, bewildered disbelief. “What a… mess,” he said, finally.

  “Who has been notified of this?” William asked the abbess. “The mayor? The sheriff?”

  Mother Mary Beatrix hesitated.

  “We have taken no action,” she said cautiously. “These are unsettled times. The plague was hereabouts a year back, and there have been rapid changes in tenancies of the land because of it. Beasts—even flocks in some cases—have passed from man to man. It is not as easy as it might have been even a few years ago to establish beyond doubt who might rightfully own what. Things are no longer clear. Our blessed holy Father’s residence at Avignon… well… the people sometimes consider… these are licentious times.”

  Mary Beatrix stopped. If she had little to say in commendation of the Pope, then silence was best. William read her silence with no effort. They lived in days of corruption, when cynicism abounded, the celibacy of priests was compromised on a grand scale, and spiritual progress bought more than hard-won. An old woman’s cottage accidentally burnt down by a raggle-taggle group of drunken men would be unlikely to be seen as cause for much concern. Even so, “Katelin did not own the land, I think? The lord of the manor will be short a rent. He at least will want to know.”

  “It was glebe land,” said John quietly. “It belongs to St Mary’s at York.”

  Not one of the four of them needed to voice what was in the minds of all. If the root of the ruckus had been an allegation of witchcraft, there was evidence enough. The women could read; they knew herbs; they were healers; they lived together alone without a man and under no religious rule. It was enough. Any justice sought would be countered instantly by those with an interest to protect themselves, with trumped-up stories of spells and curses and incantations. The very authorities who might have protected her would likely drag Madeleine from her refuge and finish what coarse ruffians had begun. It would be wiser to let things lie. The walls of the monastery and a cloak of silence wrapped around her would keep Madeleine safer than the king’s court or the ecclesiastical authorities or the sheriff.

  His face bleak and hopeless, John turned away from the grave. There was nothing to be done; he just had to accept this. The consequence of further investigation could be the devastation of his sister’s life. She had enough to reproach him for already.

  “I cannot pray,” he muttered. “God help me, I cannot pray.” He stumbled away from the grave, glancing back at it once.

  “Mother Abbess, I think we must presume upon your hospitality this one night,” said William. “I must go with him to the cottage before evening today. I think he needs to see what damage was done and get a grasp of how things were. It is painful now, but what we know is ever easier to come to terms with than what we imagine. Tomorrow we will make our way home. There seems little comfort we can hope to offer just now to his sister, Madeleine.”

  The Mother Abbess nodded in sober understanding.

  “Please avail yourself of anything our house has to offer. If there is any healing, any easing of pain that we can bring to this sickening brutality, we shall be glad of it. Do not fret for Madeleine. We shall watch over her. With God’s grace we may lead her out of the place she is in now. And John Hazell has a good friend indeed in you, Father.”

  “He’s been a good friend, in his turn, to me,” William responded.

  Yes, Mary Beatrix thought, so I have heard. But she did not say it. And she thought this might not be the best day to ask if one of them could preside at the morrow Mass if they were staying overnight.

  She did have to ask though.

  “Dear Mother would be glad of a word,” whispered Sister Mary Cuthbert in William’s ear in the tranquil moments of gathering before Vespers that evening. Glancing up, he saw her
standing, waiting, behind the barred screen separating the nave from the choir. Reverencing the possibility of the reserve sacrament as he passed the parish altar, William went quick and light to see what she wanted of him.

  “Father,” she said in the quiet undertone appropriate to a conversation here in church, “our priest is sick, and we have nobody to say Mass for us in the morning. I was wondering… this is awkward, for of course I should really have asked Father John.”

  Her gaze, quiet, level, discreet, questioned his.

  “Most certainly,” he responded. “Yes, one of us will. I’ll ask him tonight, to find out whether he would rather I do it. But rest assured, one of us will.”

  Ashamed to the living core of his soul, John admitted he did not even want to think about celebrating the Mass. He had set himself to be holding together in time for their return home, but this request caught him off guard. “I can do it,” said William.

  As John hesitated, wretched and anxious at failing in the duty of his office and status, letting down the reputation of his house, William added, “Look, let me do this. It’s the first time anyone has asked me to preside at Mass since St Dunstan’s was razed. Do you think I haven’t missed it? I’m not a shining example of the priesthood, I own it, but I’m not yet spiritually dead either.”

  “I’m sorry,” said John numbly. “William, forgive me; I never thought…”

  “Oh, by all the saints, I meant no reproach! St Alcuin’s is jostling with priests; what would I expect? I’m only saying… Just give your permission, Abbot John! Make something easy!”

  And John nodded in silence.

  The afternoon had been hard and painful. John had no wish to ride through the village; he did not want to be seen or recognized. He had no desire for vengeance, no wish to search for those who had hurt his family to curse and upbraid them. He had been gone too long from Motherwell; he could make no guess now as to who among the villagers might bear the blame. He had accepted that seeking justice could stir up more than it resolved. He just wanted to see the cottage.

  The monastery where they were staying perched on the hillside above the treacherous ground that became so boggy when the river flooded after spring and autumn rains. Springs welled plentifully in the earth here, so the sisters did not rely on the river for their laundry or their kitchen or their baths. They had two wells, which between them never ran dry. Even so, their house had been built only halfway up the hill, so that the rising land might protect them from the north and east winds, and the reredorter might drain through the natural filter of the earth down to the river. Their drain was not sophisticated, but, given a certain level of maintenance—digging out the sump when guests had been plentiful—it served.

  The two men had ridden farther down into the valley, crossed the river at the fording place to the west, and made their way up through the wooded slopes and over the brow of the hill to the cottage where John had been born on the edge of the heath, a goodly mile out of the village.

  He got down from his horse without a word, handing the reins up to William, who likewise dismounted and hitched the two beasts to a fence post. William stayed where he was with the animals, leaving John space to assimilate the scene that met his eyes.

  Almost nothing remained of the cottage. The thatch and timbers had gone. Its walls had been built of stone and clay hauled up from the riverbed. Men valued stones already shaped for building. There was little left now even of the walls.

  The places where herbs and vegetables and flowers grew had been trampled, and some plants dug up and taken. The goat shed still stood, its door banging in the wind. The henhouse was gone completely—not destroyed, removed.

  The house place looked so small and desolate. Blackened and charred remains of household objects—a wash pail, a stool, a bedstead, clumped pages of torn books—had been left behind. It seemed that anything still worth reusing had vanished into other lives and homes.

  John stepped slowly across the garden with its pretty hedge of honeysuckle, roses, and blackberry, its small shading trees of hawthorn and elder, and came to a standstill at the edge of the scattered, burnt debris that was left of his childhood home.

  William watched him pick his way into the mess, stoop, and lift out of the ashes still wet with dew a book half consumed by fire. John raised his head and looked back, saying something William could not catch; so he crossed the garden to stand beside him.

  “A missal,” said John. “My mother’s missal. ‘Witch’ indeed! Oh God in heaven! Such cruel, gross brutality.” His face, hard and drawn, turned to William. “And I know, if I take this to the sheriff or the lord of the manor or any man, he will ask me, ‘What did a woman want a missal for, unless she be a witch, seeking to foul it with her own perversion?’ It’s crazy, William, crazy! And it is cruel, and it’s not fair.”

  “The world? Aye,” murmured his companion, “and we must make the best of it we can.”

  “They take it from the Bible,” John went on, his voice shaking, “and they take it from the tradition of the church. They go to the texts of the Church Fathers and the book of Genesis and the Law of Moses and the epistles of the New Testament to find proof that women are pits of filth and dangerous temptresses, cesspools of evil. From the Bible! In Christ’s holy name, William, what must God think? When he looks down from heaven and sees what we do with his book, what we use it for! Witch-hunting and stoning and pillorying and persecuting! For mercy’s sake, is that Christ’s gospel of reconciliation and love? Is that what the Book of God is for? What have we done, we in the monasteries who have carefully scribed out the works of John Chrysostom and Clement of Alexandria and Cyril and Tertullian and St Jerome and Augustine of Hippo and all the rest of them? Our young men have sat in the scriptorium faithfully copying out that every woman should be overcome with shame that she is a woman, that women are the Devil’s gateway, that woman is the root of all evil, that women are especially dishonoured by God and should be especially dishonoured by men—and here it is! Here’s the dishonour! Here’s what we let our scribes write that our novices might read and our preachers might teach—and look at it! Look at the result! Oh God, oh God, oh God! Forgive us!”

  He let the remains of the missal drop to the ground and buried his face in his sooty hands, shaken with grief. He fell to his knees, bending low, convulsed with sorrow, groaning, “Forgive us. God, forgive us.”

  At least that’s what William, standing watching him, thought he was probably saying.

  William folded his arms and waited. After about fifteen minutes had gone by, he decided enough was enough. He squatted down at John’s side. He put out a hand to touch him, thought better of it, and withdrew his hand.

  “Father,” he said, “John—come now. Come. Set it aside. You will drive yourself mad. Perhaps the Church Fathers had heartless mothers. Perhaps they had temptations it was easier not to admit. Celibacy doesn’t sit easy all the time with anyone. Best to let their ravings sink where they belong and be grateful for anything left that makes sense. Come now.”

  But John lifted up a face contorted with fury and grief. “How can you say that? How can you make light of it? How can you brush it aside as a thing of little consequence? Look at this devastation! See what we have wrought with our pious talk! Does this mean nothing to you?”

  William listened to this. Squatting began to feel distinctly uncomfortable, so he stood up again. He clasped his hands and raised them to his face, rubbing his thumb pensively against his mouth, waiting. Over his joined hands, his calm, considering eyes regarded his abbot. He betrayed no sign of impatience or irritation, but William still thought this had better stop.

  John glared up at him, possessed by his anger and distress, his face blotched red and smudged with charcoal and ashes. William said not a word. The wind blew about them, carrying the scents of summer grasses and flowers and the acrid smell of burning. Above them a curlew cried.

  Nothing lasts forever.

  John felt the tide of rage subside, leaving b
ehind a deep, dragging weariness.

  “I loved them so much,” he whispered, “and this was such a happy home.”

  “Come, my lord.” William reached down to help him up. “We have seen what’s done, and there is no mending it. Thugs are just thugs and will always find someone to beat up. And the Church Fathers, well, even the wise and great have their follies, and the Word of God is often bent to the purposes of men. They were paid to think, and they were poor workmen. Anticipation is the chief tool of leadership—to see what we have said today will land us in tomorrow. They failed us there. But let’s go now. There is no further good we can do here. It’s best to let it lie.”

  They walked in silence across the spoiled garden. As they reached their mounts, John raised his eyes to his brother, who met his gaze inquiringly.

  “Does nothing of this move you?” said John. “Does nothing in you respond and understand?”

  William’s eyebrows lifted.

  “Oh. Yes, I think so, my lord abbot. It is not unfamiliar ground. I have been used to living with mutters of ‘their entrails should be torn out, they should be butchered and burned, evil stinking misbegotten sons of Satan.’ I found it quite amusing. Um—until they actually turned on me and did it, of course. Then I was only afraid. I understand. But what’s to do? The world, the church, the people—they are always like this. Sometimes it will be your comeuppance, sometimes someone else’s. Tears will not alter it. But they flow, and we cannot help it. We are only human after all.”