The Wife Test

by Betina Krahn

  “Wedded?” The abbot seemed more puzzled than outraged by the news.

  “The day after the vows, the king dismissed me from Windsor to return to my father’s house at Sennet,” Hugh revealed.

  “Sent away from court?” That brought the lean, dessicated-looking abbot bolt upright in his chair. “How dare he do that to my—” Halting, he pushed to his feet and paced in an agitated but arthritic manner. “Wretched kings. Never do what they say. Always scheming.” Then he paused to look at Hugh. “When will you be allowed back?”

  “Back?”

  “At court.” The abbot came to seize his shoulder in a fierce grip. “How long before you return to Windsor?”

  “He didn’t say anything about my returning.” Hugh was confused by the abbot’s attitude. “I assumed he meant that I would stay at Sennet.”

  “Don’t be an ass-head—of course he’ll want you back.” The abbot’s eyes darted over some unseen mental tableau. “You must go as quickly as possible … remind him of his obligation to continue the work begun here in his name.”

  “The work?” Hugh shook his head.

  “He has commissioned several books, including the Scriptures, to be copied for his use. And he has made generous donations each year since you—since he discovered what a vital and worthy task we perform.” The abbot loosened his grip and gave Hugh’s shoulder a benevolent pat before releasing him. “We must give it a while … allow him to miss you. Then I will send you to him with one of the books we are copying for him. He will welcome you back to his bosom, and all will be well again. You’ll see.”

  Hugh watched his one-time mentor sway back to his chair and drop heavily into it. A moment later the abbot looked up and seemed surprised that he was still there.

  “About my duties, Reverend Father …”

  The abbot looked a bit nettled and waved him out the door. “You will likely find some way to make yourself useful until you can return to court.”

  Hugh exited with a deeply unsettled feeling. Not a word had been spoken about his marriage or the fact that his wedding vows might hinder him from taking religious ones. The abbot hadn’t been at all concerned with the fleshly obligations his marriage placed him under or the spiritual conflict he faced. He had only seemed to care that Hugh was no longer at court to act as his agent and an advocate for the monastery.

  Through the rest of the daylight hours, he mulled over the abbot’s behavior. Years ago he had been puzzled and disappointed when the abbot sent him away for training as a knight instead of allowing him to take vows. He had always assumed that after a suitable length of time, he would be welcomed back to the monastery and taken fully into the order. But after four long years of devotedly serving the monastery’s interests with the king, he found himself considered a disappointment … not because of his entanglement with the world, but because of his sudden lack of it.

  He slept poorly that night, what with bells and prayers at odd hours, and rose in a testy humor. After a spartan meal of porridge and boiled barley water, Hugh wandered out to the stables and saw to the care of the monastery’s horses and cows and other hoof stock, then spent some time in the copying room.

  There, a score of tonsured heads were bent over tall, ink-stained tables, wielding quills and tiny horsehair brushes with alacrity and precision. This was the place he had loved as a boy … the place where the brothers created the elegant and intriguing illuminations that adorned the texts. He recognized most of the brother copyists and waited respectfully until they raised their heads and re-dipped their quills to greet them. Strangely, two of the older monks squinted fiercely at him and behaved as if they were meeting him for the first time. They looked gray and drawn, and their shoulders had taken on the hump so characteristic of those who sat stooped over parchment and quills, day after wearying day.

  Feeling suddenly too confined, Hugh went straight to the chapel and spent the rest of the day there in prayer. What was he doing here? Did he honestly hope to stay and take up life as a monk? He thought of Chloe and of the vows he had made to her. He was caught between two worlds … trying to find his place, to find his way back to … something he feared he had lost.

  After none prayers the next day, as he exited the chapel and began to walk slowly and meditatively around the inner colonnade of the cloister, he heard a rusty, strident voice and discovered old Brother Hericule settling into a corner of the colonnade with a number of novitiates, beginning a lecture on theology and doctrine. He approached the group and leaned against one of the thick stone columns, listening.

  Hericule was even more ancient than Hugh remembered, and as he railed on about the temptations of the flesh and the corruption that contact with the world brought, Hugh realized that the words sounded very familiar. It was the same lecture, word for word, that he had heard more than a decade ago. But the venom the old brother reserved for the fallen was still every bit as potent as it had been in those days.

  When the old monk paused for a breath, he followed his pupils’ errant gaze to Hugh.

  “Aha. Hugh of Sennet. Once one of our best and brightest.” Hericule began with an uncharacteristic bit of flattery, but continued in a very different vein. “You abandoned us for the world and the lure of riches and easy living at court. What are you doing back? Did you wear out your welcome in the halls of the mighty?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hugh was taken aback by the old man’s harsh words and felt suddenly as if he were fourteen again and being stripped of pride and dignity by the old brother’s fierce remonstrance. Shaken by the depth of his embarrassment, he had difficulty summoning a response.

  “I was just … wedded and … I came to …” He was still at a loss to explain just what he had expected in coming to Saint Barnard’s.

  “To escape the befouling influence of the kept fools and devil’s lackeys who serve the princes of this world.” The old brother shook his finger at Hugh, then turned on the green youths whose heads were not yet stuffed with enough of his wisdom to merit full tonsure. “This is what happens when you embrace the world. They bewitch and befoul you … yoke you to things of the flesh … to women who infect you with their malignant ways until you are sick unto eternal death and damnation.

  “ ‘To keep thee from the evil woman … lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids,’ ” Hericule quoted furiously. “Proverbs 6:25. ‘For a woman is a deep ditch, and a strange woman is a narrow pit. She also lieth in wait for a prey.’ Proverbs 23:27. Women are one with the beasts of earth … rutting and breeding … unclean … with minds so steeped in stinking female humors that they are not capable of higher things. They know nothing of prayer and communion with God. They must depend on men to intercede for them … to correct them and chastise them.

  “Scripture says: If your hand offends you, cut if off. I say, if your body betrays you into the hands of women, cut the offending member out of your flesh. Better to go into the kingdom of Heaven maimed—a eunuch by your own hand—than to be cast down into the Pit!”

  Hugh backed away, feeling choked, unable to breathe properly for all of the fury old Hericule had unleashed on the air. He could see in the eyes of the novitiates the same fear and desperation for salvation he had felt upon hearing such fiery condemnations of women and the flesh. The look on those callow, impressionable faces appalled him.

  For the first time he heard those words as a mature man able to judge them against his own knowledge of a real flesh-and-blood woman. Chloe. And every damned one of the old man’s poisonous charges failed the test. Chloe was nothing like old Hericule’s demonic “woman” … stupid, deceitful, immoral, filthy, predatory, and godless. His Chloe was quick and clever, even-tempered and astoundingly forgiving, educated beyond most men, and wise beyond her years. She was considerate of others … generous, self-sacrificing. The very opposite, in fact, of all Brother Hericule declared women to be.

  So, he realized with no little surprise, were her sisters.

>   He halted in the middle of the damp cloister walk.

  So was Lady Marcella. And the queen. And his late mother.

  None of them was like the temptresses of Hericule’s diatribes. None were carriers of corruption and contagion, none were “deep ditches” or evil predators seeking to feast on juicy male souls.

  Not even his own brazen little sisters … bastards though they were … exhibited the degradation he’d been taught to expect in females. He looked back over his shoulder and for the first time saw Hericule for the withered and pathetic old iconoclast he was. For years he had been spouting his views about women and the flesh, quoting Saint Augustine and John of Chrysostom … even the Scriptures themselves. How long had it been since he had even seen a woman? Did he know any, personally? Had he ever? How had he become the monastery’s authority on the subject?

  Striking off for the library, he walked fast and then faster. With his heart pounding, he insisted on having access to the great altar copy of the Scriptures. The old brother guarding the manuscripts was flustered by such a demand and scurried off to consult the abbot for permission. Hugh headed for the massive leather-bound copy of Scriptures that stood chained to a heavy stand at the center of the musty chamber. After turning the heavy pages for a time, he came to the book of Proverbs … reverently located the twenty-third chapter … and ran his fingers gingerly down the page to the twenty-seventh verse.

  There it was. The copyists were truer to the Word than Hericule had been. “For a whore is a deep ditch, and a strange woman is a narrow pit.” Chloe had been right. It wasn’t a condemnation of women. Read with the true wording, it was a warning against venery and dangerous association. He straightened, feeling both vindicated and convicted. She’d been right all along. And he had learned that flawed version from—

  How had old Hericule gotten away with such a bastardization of Scripture? Why would the abbot allow such poisonous falsehoods to be taught as truth, here, within these hallowed walls?

  Reeling from his discovery, he backed away from the great Bible and stood staring at it. How many more errors had been drummed into his impressionable head under the guise of “truth”?

  He began to pull volumes from the shelves, opening and reading from them, then stacking them, still opened, on the long table near the Bible stand. That was where the abbot and the librarian found him, surrounded by open books, feverishly searching them for things recalled or half remembered.

  “What are you doing, my son?” the Reverend Father demanded with controlled alarm.

  “Trying to decide if anything I learned during my days here is true,” Hugh said, pain and fury warring for control in his countenance.

  “Everything we teach is right and proper.” The abbot seemed shocked, then indignant. “We are keepers of the truth and the glory of the church. Defenders of the faith.”

  “Which faith?” Hugh snarled, releasing the contempt that had been building in him. “Hericule’s? According to him every married man in Christendom is irretrievably bound for the flames of hell.”

  The abbot finally perceived the depth of Hugh’s turmoil. “Our good brother has strong feelings about the value of our celibacy. His teaching is sometimes forceful …” He seemed to suddenly recall Hugh’s announcement that he’d been required to marry. “Is that what troubles you, my son? This marriage the king has forced upon you? You must know that God will not hold you responsible for so onerous a condition. It was surely not of your doing. Who is this wretched female he’s shackled you to?”

  Hugh lunged forward, but caught himself as the abbot lurched back with a gasp.

  Wretched female. His Chloe?

  Shackled. To Chloe’s loving presence?

  Hugh stood there in the library he had once loved with all his heart and felt the cosmos as he had known it grinding to a halt. The teachings, the certainty, the feeling of connection to the holy church—to God Himself—hung in the balance. But if the teachings were suspect or even wrong … and the certainty was lost … how much of a true connection to the holy church and to God could there be?

  That, he realized, was what he had come here to do: retrieve that sense of connection to the holy and the sacred, that feeling of inclusion and belonging to God. From that anchor he had expected to chart his course with regard to the rest of his life.

  He looked from the abbot’s shrewd face to the librarian’s simple one … and glanced around him at the dim and dusty library full of books that few were permitted to glimpse, much less study. And he strode out.

  On the cloister walk he stopped and stared at the darkened columns that stood in near constant shadow, covered in places with moss and lichen that gave them a moldy appearance. The roof of the colonnade dripped water here and there, and the ill-drained cloister green was a quagmire. Had it always looked so small and unkempt? Had it always been so ingrown and adamantly exclusive?

  In closing themselves off from the world to devote themselves to God, the brothers had not only rejected unhealthy influences, they had turned their backs on the good the world had to offer as well … the generosity, beauty, compassion, and nobility of the human spirit.

  What was it Chloe had asked him? Where was the love or joy or forgiveness in the sin-filled world that he and the church inhabited? He looked around at the cold, isolating walls. There didn’t seem to be any room for it here.

  With a rush of tumult, anguish, and triumph rushing headlong together, he had the curious sensation of time restarting around and within him. The earth stirred once again. The heavens rolled. And he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he would not find what he was looking for in this place.

  Gripped by a sudden urgency to see Chloe and talk with her, to hear her eminently sensible thoughts and feel her lush, loving presence, he headed for the stables. Behind him the brothers collecting for vespers were learning of his bizarre behavior and being thrown into turmoil at the idea that their beloved order was rejected and defamed.

  “Hear me, my son!” the abbot called from the inner gate as Hugh rode past him toward the main entrance. “You mustn’t go before you’ve had a chance to think on this and repent your harsh words. You must stay and confess … purge your sins.” Hugh kept riding. “What if you should die on the road in such a state of anger and disobedience? Where would your soul be then?”

  Night was coming on as Hugh turned his back on the abbot’s warnings and rode through the gate. But there would be moonlight enough to ride by, and he would be home by tomorrow midday. As he used his heels and set his horse to a gentle gallop, he realized that in his thoughts he had identified Sennet as “home.” And for the first time in days, he smiled.

  It was a long night. The silence of the moon-silvered countryside gave him a chance to think of a way to make amends for leaving her bed to run off to the monastery. Chloe being Chloe, she might feel hurt and be irritable and difficult at first. But she had forgiven him before, and he was confident enough of her good heart that he believed he could talk his way into her good graces again. Or not talk. Whatever the circumstances might dictate.

  He stopped only to give his mount water and a rest, and again to break his fast at a small village along the way. As he neared Sennet, well after sunrise, he rode faster and scanned the horizon for the outline of the estate he now called home. By the time the village, walls, and house came into view, he was eager enough to visually search the outlying cottages and treeless castle approach for signs of her … even knowing there was little chance of seeing her there.

  Things seemed oddly quiet as he rode through the main gate and up the winding path to the front doors of the hall. He dismounted and asked the boy who ran up to take his horse where everyone was. The boy shrugged and Hugh bounded into the hall, where he was greeted by a chorus of “Hugh!” and “He’s back!”

  His sisters descended on him and all talked at once before Trueblood arrived to silence them and help him make some sense of their chaotic story.

  “Riders, soldiers, came from the king y
esterday morn,” Ellen declared anxiously. “They arrested Chloe and hauled her back to Windsor Castle.”

  “Arrested?” Hugh was stunned. “On what charge?”

  “Father threatened to draw and quarter the lot of them, but Chloe … she insisted on going with them, to prevent blood from being spilled,” Lizabeth continued breathlessly.

  “Father declared that he would accompany her and keep her safe”—Corinne gave him a furious look—“since you weren’t here to do it. He took Sir Magnus and old Sir Hereford with him, and several of those men you brought back with you from France.”

  “If he runs somebody through and we all get disoppressed—” Ellen began.

  “Dispossessed,” Lizabeth corrected her.

  “Did I ask you?” Ellen glared at Lizabeth, before turning again to Hugh. “If we have to leave our home because you weren’t here and Father did something gallant and stupid, and the king declares us all outlaws … we’ll never forgive you!”

  “What kind of brother are you, anyway?” Corinne said, looking him over.

  “What kind of husband are you?” Ellen demanded with a critical sniff.

  “Why, you little—” He was on the verge of exploding when Trueblood stepped between them.

  “You’ll be wantin’ a bite to eat an’ a fresh horse, I reckon.”

  Hugh somehow managed to swallow back his anger and belay an urge to brotherly mayhem. Flailing the three of them might be satisfying but wouldn’t get him any closer to Windsor and helping Chloe. What the devil could the king have arrested Chloe for? He turned from his infuriating little sisters to the housekeeper with a look of unspoken gratitude.

  “You reckon right.” He caught the housekeeper back by the sleeve. “What were the charges? Surely they said.”

  Her answer caused Hugh’s universe to grind to a halt for the second time in two days.