The Hour Before Dawn

by Penelope Wilcock

  “Anyway, it’s Ascension Day next week, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m begging your indulgence now; please bear with me, for I want to make you listen to something I need to hear myself, something I’m trying to understand and trying to believe, but I haven’t quite got there yet.

  “What’s been snagging at my soul in recent days is the thing Jesus said to Mary Magdalene in the story of Easter morning that we listened to a few weeks ago. He comes to her at this moment in which she thinks she’s lost everything because she’s lost him. Her life has gone grey, and all its meaning is snuffed out. In the hour before dawn when everything is still hopelessly dark, she can’t see him—can’t recognize him, I mean—and she begs him to tell her where they have laid her Lord, so she can go and weep over the corpse of what used to be. But then Christ says her name, and suddenly she sees the living reality of him in her new situation. Naturally, in astonishment and delight she reaches out to embrace him. But he says, ‘Noli me tangere—don’t touch me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father.’ I have never understood these strange words, but I think I have found a glimpse into them in recent days.

  “I don’t need to tell you of my sorrow and anguish in this recent time—my mother murdered and my sister raped and left for dead. It’s been just dreadful. It has tortured me beyond bearing to contemplate the thought of it. At the centre of the horror, the thing that really crucified me was knowing that if I had been there and not here, I might have prevented it. I am used to the idea of a vocation being costly, but not to contemplating just how costly it could be for my family.

  “In the middle of all this, I’ve felt entombed. Like a bird battering and bruising itself against the bars of its cage, my spirit has battered against the confines of earthly being, bruised by the appalling, inescapable realities of the things that happened, especially to my sister, who has been damaged—I think, irreparably.

  “Crucified, then entombed—but there came a time to come back into the hurting, stabbing light of day, to try to be something better and more workable than simply out of my mind with horror, tormented by the nightmare my family went through.

  “Now this is the thing I wanted to talk to you about. I have found, in this strange time, that I cannot bear to be touched. My own humanity has become unbearable to me. I have felt that if anyone touches me I will break completely, beyond what I feel I can endure. I thank you so much for having respected that. Nobody has tried to enfold me in an embrace to console me or put an arm around my shoulders or any of that. You have given me the noli me tangere space I’ve needed, emerging from the death of what reality used to be for me.

  “But I am noticing that Christ said to Mary not just, ‘Don’t touch me,’ but, ‘Don’t touch me; for I am not yet ascended to the Father,’ which implies imminent change about to take place. Now then, here is my hope. Crucifixion, yes; emerging from the tomb into the painful light, yes; noli me tangere, yes; but what came next is that Christ did ascend to the Father, and when that happened, people all over the place were put into touch with him, accessing the transformative power of his life.

  “My brothers, please don’t think I am saying, ‘Look at me, I am exactly like Christ’; for I am not! I am painfully, miserably conscious of how childishly self-centred my response has been to the impact of this horror and grief. All I mean is, in looking forward to the story of the Ascension, I have glimpsed hope. What I have been through felt like the tearing agony of crucifixion; before God, it did! I am not exaggerating. The only respite from it was when I fell into such darkness of despair it was like being sealed in a tomb. The strange imperative of seeming unable to bear the touch of any human being has felt like living in a kind of molten state, like a butterfly losing the integrity of its being in the pupation time of the chrysalis: to be touched, pried open, would bring complete disintegration. Again my brothers, I thank you for honouring that.

  “But something in me sees—and loses sight of and then sees again and then loses again—a vision that where I am now, noli me tangere, is not the final word. This is but the hour before the dawn. The time of healing will come, and when it does, my spirit will find its way up to God’s light and grace, will be enabled to rise above what has happened, will be empowered to grow into something new.

  “What I was is dead and buried; what I am is in a half-formed, dissolved condition that barely holds together from day to day. I feel unrecognizable even to those who knew me the best. But I know that when I have grown into the new, when I have managed to crawl into the lap of God, I will be able to bear human touch again. You will be able to touch me because I shall be held fast in the heart of the Father.

  “I feel the need to apologize to you, for I am not there yet. At the moment I am only half-formed—disintegrated, destroyed, pupated. Please bear with me and continue to pray for me—that in due course my spirit will rise out of this. Ascension Day drawing near has given me new hope—that there is a way up out of this, that one day my life will begin again—not as a reversion to what it used to be, but as a resurrection.”

  John spoke these words into a profound, receptive silence unsullied by restlessness. The community was gathered in focus and intent. They cared about him; they wanted his healing; they had prayed for him. He felt humbled by this unspoken strength that upheld him. When he stopped speaking, he had a sense of something being cleansed in him, an easing of pain allowing a possibility of peace. He could feel his way to the source of this change; it was because they had heard him, because they saw what life had done to him, and they held him gently, without questioning or reproof. They were giving him time to find his feet again, trusting him to come through into the light where they waited and held on for him. John bowed his head, grateful.

  None of this meant that everything was instantly better; sorrow is not like that. Still John lay awake in bed most nights, sleep eluding him. Still he found he needed solitude and quiet ness. But he felt able to pick up the work that needed his attention. Again he felt humbled by his brothers’ support on every side. Brother Ambrose or Father William would come to his lodging with bills to sign, and the matter was dealt with merely by writing his name and adding his seal. The precentor and sacristan managed the liturgical rhythm of monastic life without his input, and Father Theodore kept the novices safely under his own wing with no need for consultation with their abbot. Brother Michael oversaw the infirmary and Brother Cormac the kitchen. The gardens, the farm, the pottery, the guest house, and the school continued to run smoothly because they were well-managed. Father Chad was happy to intercept most of their guests. His brothers shielded him from involvement beyond what was strictly necessary. And gradually he was coming to himself again, getting the feel and the life of the place back into his hands as quickly as he could.

  He had no way to tell his community how grateful he felt; he just hoped they felt it, as he felt the solid bulwark of their love and prayer. He did his best for them and for God, as they were also doing their best, but he could not evade the knowledge that something remained numbed and shuttered at the core of himself. He was still frozen in the space of noli me tangere. He wondered if he would ever again, without any effort in the doing of it, reach out to touch with healing hands, put out his hand without stopping to think, to ascertain what the matter was and what he could do to help. He did not see what more he or anyone could do to thaw out the numbness that had taken hold of his heart.

  Dutifully, every day, he had prayed for his sister and held her protectively in the light of God’s love. He trusted that one day, by some means, she could be healed.

  On that eve of the feast of the Ascension, Abbot John looked the picture of self-possession and composure as he sat at his capacious table spread with neat heaps of bills from the checker brought for the endorsement of his seal. Cautiously, and with a certain degree of amazement, he acknowledged to himself that he actually felt quite cheerful and no longer overwhelmed. He accorded himself a measure of approval. It had been, after all, only a
month since the appalling news had been brought to him. He had struggled through to functionality with the best speed he could muster.

  “Father John.”

  John looked up from the heap of documents on his table to see William standing there. It came into his mind that when anybody else looked at him, he felt merely held in that person’s line of vision. When William looked at him, he felt as though those eyes were somehow penetrating the inmost recesses of his being. It occurred to him that William must have been a very good superior, if only he hadn’t been such a thoroughly bad one.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “The door is wide open, else I should have knocked. Is it too late to ask if I may come in?”

  “It would appear so. I will warn you, though, if you have brought me any more of your difficult contracts and deeds to look over, I shall fall irrecoverably into a dementia only to escape them.”

  William nodded thoughtfully. “You will have to tell me it has happened; else how shall I know? But look—am I disturbing you?”

  “As you see. I have this pesky cellarer’s assistant who lets nothing by him, not the smallest footling thing, and is making me examine everything because he has some shady ambition to drag us out of our Gospel simplicity into well-being and prosperity. I’m minded to get rid of him, but he won’t go away. What is it?”

  “Well, I have something on my conscience.”

  “On your what? Heaven bless us, this is new!”

  Abbot John pushed his chair back from the table. Somewhat to his surprise, he found it moved silently. Looking down at the feet of it he saw that someone—presumably Tom—had stuck a little pad of felted wool under each foot. John wondered if every time he had pushed his chair back, it had grated on Brother Tom’s nerves as well as on the stone flags of the floor. Tom had never said anything.

  “Come in then, thou rogue; sit thee down. What’s the thorn that has discovered thy conscience?”

  William followed his abbot across to the two chairs near the hearth. Tom had laid the fire but this May morning had left it unlit. The men sat down together beside where the fire would have been.

  “Since you’re sitting here, and for once not prattling incontinently about some incomprehensible scheme of your own to make me sleep uneasy as you consolidate our wealth, there’s something I’ve been intending to raise with you too, when the moment presented.”

  “Go on then,” William responded. “You’re my abbot. You first. ’Tis fitting.”

  From time to time when John found his thoughts focusing on William, he marvelled at how valuable he had become to their community and gave silent thanks that they had not in lack of faith and in simple ignorance thrown this strange jewel away. During these awful weeks of struggle, John was vaguely aware that William had never been far from his side; quietly watching, working tirelessly to see that the day-to-day running of the abbey ran smoothly, that their investments and purchases were sound and their rents paid on time. Nobody tried to cheat William; it wasn’t worth it, in all kinds of ways. Abbot John understood the cellarer’s work well enough to know that this obedience fulfilled faithfully and intelligently made all the difference in the world to the abbot’s work. He knew that, through all the nightmare, William had seen to it that the socket into which his daily life fitted was protective and secure. John understood too that in his detached and undemonstrative way, this shrewd and calculating soul loved him, but without burdening him with the usual human demands made by those who love—to be first, to be special, to be beheld and understood. Content to watch over him quietly, William kept his distance, but there was something about having him there that made John feel safe. He felt that in this man he had a friend who would notice and observe all his weaknesses, everything he felt ashamed of and wished he had not done, with perfect equanimity, simply seeing it was so. And he thought that in this if in nothing else, he saw something Christlike in William—acceptance of John’s humanity, just as it was. Neither in awe of John’s status nor afraid of his anguish, William’s acceptance felt restful and even healing.

  At this moment he was waiting imperturbably for his abbot to speak.

  “It was only I wanted to say thank you,” said John, “for everything you are doing here, which is quite literally worth its weight in gold, as you surely know. But also for all that you said to me the day we met with Madeleine. I’ve had occasion, many times in the course of more sleepless nights than I care to remember, to cling quite desperately to what you said to me then. It might be overconfident to say it’s pulled me through, but I know it stopped me from going insane over it all.”

  William inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment of this. Under the composure of his features, a smile of appreciation faintly gleamed. “If I have helped, I am most glad,” he replied, “for I believe I owe you everything.”

  It was rare for him to step out from behind the habitual irony of his persona, and John looked at him, intrigued. He had discovered that the gentle insults of affection suited William better than the claustrophobia of emotion. Hardly ever did he speak his heart in simple terms, and when he did, he was not comfortable staying long in that open intimacy. So John moved on.

  “But what did you have on your ‘conscience’, as I think you called it?”

  “Well… Father…”

  John frowned, puzzled and intrigued. In the first place William did not often address him as Father. “My lord abbot,” he said more often, with a certain sardonic flourish, a hint of exaggerated formality, or often he avoided any form of address at all. The simplicity and intimacy of “Father” did not sit comfortably with him. Evidently whatever he had come to discuss, he was in earnest about it—and did not find it easy to say.

  “Just a minute,” said John; he got up from his chair, crossed the room, and closed the door to the cloister. The door to the abbey court, where villagers and visitors from afar most often entered his lodge, remained shut at all times except for specific admittance. But the cloister door stood open much of the time. John liked to be accessible to his brothers in community.

  “What is it?” he asked as he took his seat again. “What’s amiss?”

  “I don’t know that I can ask this. It seems a lot to ask.”

  “Out with it, man! What?”

  “Well, Father, when you passed through Chesterfield, you said, on your return home to take up the reins of the abbacy here, you came across one of us from St Dunstan’s. You said you found him destitute.”

  John nodded. “I did. And left him as I found him, for which I have felt much ashamed. For a while my mind turned to him over and again, wondering what might have become of him; but of late there seems to have been little of me left over to contemplate any sorrows but my own. And when I say it, I am ashamed of that too.”

  William nodded. “Aye, likewise. You spoke to me of him when first I came here, but my own concerns pushed his away to the edge of my thoughts, and I’m sorry for it. But my intention wasn’t to make you ashamed nor to wallow in my own shame either. I have opportunity to do that any day of the week.”

  The admission, spoken with dry humour, was, John judged, nonetheless sincere. William fascinated him. Sometimes he appeared hard, even ruthless; then he would say something like this that opened a narrow window offering a surprising glimpse into an unexpected interior. He was not without sensitivity or morality, whatever shell of indifference he chose for his shelter.

  “I wondered,” said William then, humbly and directly, “if we might go and look for him. It has plagued my conscience dreadfully. I feel safe here, but I was not safe out there, and nor will he be. How can I lift no finger to help him nor inquire what has become of him? How can I help myself to the peace and order of this house, knowing that I have left him to the mercy of the street? It has come to me more and more strongly that I should go and find him—nay, if I’m honest, that I should have gone long before this. But… well, the truth is, I am afraid to go.

  “I know you have hardly had the chance to give
your new position the attention it deserves. I know I have taken up inordinate quantities of your time and attention already. I know you have been through so much, it is an impertinence to ask you anything. I realize you must have matters awaiting your perusal and response stacked up to the rafters almost. I see full well that I have no right to ask. But though from our point of view it is an unwelcome extra intrusion into what has already been chaotic enough, I am asking myself if from his point of view he may have reached despair or fallen sick… or the Lord alone knows what may have befallen him.

  “I think I must go and see if I can’t find him, but I am afraid to go alone, for they do not love me in Chesterfield, nor anywhere else. And besides, you know where we might look for him.”

  “So when you say, ‘Can we go and look for him?’ you are meaning, ‘Can we go right now?’”

  William did not reply. He looked at his abbot. As John’s eyes met the curious, shifting surface of William’s gaze, like all places stony and wild, like all dangerous seas under a bleak sky, he found it odd that he had come to like him so much, and odder still to read in those aloof, feral eyes that William trusted him.

  “Are you satisfied that Brother Ambrose—or ‘Saint Ambrose’ as I believe the brothers are calling him since he got his new assistant—can cope without your help?”

  William nodded.

  “Everything is in beautiful order, my lord abbot. Some promising investments are made—I am just waiting for word of a ship coming in to harbour, and I don’t expect that quite yet. The Lady Day rents are all finally in—after a certain degree of necessary persecution. Everything else is sorted and folded and squared off and nailed down. If Saint Ambrose can’t cope with things as they are, you need to get a new cellarer.”

  “Well, I think I have a new cellarer, in all but name, and you are doing a grand job, which I appreciate more than I can tell you. So we’ll go together then?”

  A gleam of gratitude illumined William’s eyes.