The Hawk and the Dove Read online

  Text copyright © 1990 Penelope Wilcock

  This edition copyright © 2015 Lion Hudson

  The right of Penelope Wilcock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published by Lion Fiction

  an imprint of

  Lion Hudson plc

  Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road

  Oxford OX2 8DR, England

  www.lionhudson.com/fiction

  ISBN 978 1 78264 139 1

  e-ISBN 978 1 78264 140 7

  This edition 2015

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Cover image: Brian Gallagher

  For David Bowes

  with deep gratitude

  “Even in the darkest moments of the story, hope tarries in the wings. A wonderful writer, a wonderful read.”

  Liz Curtis Higgs, New York Times bestselling author

  “These tender and charming tales of medieval monastic life have an unexpectedly modern dimension. They highlight the struggles of the human condition both in the present and in the past. They illuminate that all humankind, whether aware of it or not, is on a pilgrimage. Through these stories we accompany Father Peregrine and his monks on their journey as they struggle to overcome their personal defects and to live harmoniously in community for the glory of God.”

  Eleanor Stewart, author, Kicking the Habit

  “Poignant, moving, rich with imagery and emotion… Modern readers will easily identify with each character in Wilcock’s timeless human dramas of people learning to love and serve one another while growing in their understanding of a tender and compassionate God. Highly recommended.”

  Midwest Book Review

  “Wonderfully insightful, with a rich historical storyline. There’s more substantial content here than in much Christian fiction – about grace, about leadership and loyalty, about humility, about disability and suffering.”

  FaithfulReader.com

  “I fell in love with Penelope Wilcock’s Hawk and the Dove series when it first came out. These books are still among my favourites and, incredibly, the series keeps getting better and better. What a delight a first time reader of the series has ahead of them!”

  Donna Fletcher Crow, author, Glastonbury: The Novel of Christian England

  “This masterful look into a bygone era reminds us that Christians of every age have faced the same basic struggles: how to worship God in spirit and truth, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. Many thanks to Penelope Wilcock for showing us, through the power of literature, an old way to new life.”

  Bryan M. Litfin, Professor of Theology, Moody Bible Institute

  “Penelope Wilcock has created a wonderful cast of characters to fill the marvellously accurate fourteenth-century monastery in her medieval series. For the lover of medieval mysteries this is a series not to be missed.”

  Mel Starr, author, The Unquiet Bones

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  The Community of St Alcuin’s Abbey

  Chapter One: Mother

  Chapter Two: Father Columba

  Chapter Three: Humble Pie

  Chapter Four: Clare de Montany

  Chapter Five: The Moulting Falcon

  Chapter Six: The Ascending Lark

  Chapter Seven: Too Many Cooks

  Chapter Eight: Beginning Again

  Glossary of Terms

  Monastic Day

  Liturgical Calendar

  Foreword

  Through the years this series has been in print, lots of people have reviewed the stories. Opinions often divide over the structure of the first two novels, to the extent that I thought an explanatory note might be helpful.

  The first book in the series, The Hawk and the Dove, is written not so much as a consecutive narrative but as a series of short stories about a medieval monastery, contained within a modern setting in which a mother tells the stories to her daughter.

  This structure and the somewhat naïve style of the book came about not through mere whimsy, but as a tribute to two particular medieval texts – Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and the Fioretti of St Francis of Assisi.

  The Canterbury Tales employs the literary conceit of the frame tale, and the Fioretti gathers together a sequence of short stories (not fictional) recording the early days of the Franciscan movement from which the Order began.

  In writing The Hawk and the Dove, intrigued by the style and structure of these medieval texts, I constructed my novel similarly. It also offered the possibility of balancing two worlds – the medieval and the modern, the monastic and the secular, the feminine and the masculine. The second book, The Wounds of God, I crafted along the same model. In subsequent volumes in the series I wanted to tackle issues that did not lend themselves to this structure, so I set it aside for The Long Fall and the books that followed.

  Now, twenty-five years after the first book was published, as the series returns (in this new edition) from its long and happy stay in the United States to England where it began, I wondered whether to re-write the first two books, re-crafting them into the simple narrative style of the later volumes in the series.

  I decided not to, in the end. Partly because many mothers have enjoyed the family stories, partly because many readers whose lives are harassed and busy have been glad of a novel that divides easily into short sections that can be read in a lunch break or as a bedtime story. Also because I do love St Francis, and Chaucer and the whole medieval world, and wanted to keep my little tribute to them. And because I still have an affection for The Hawk and the Dove, the first book I ever wrote. I think it has something that speaks of the simplicity of Jesus.

  Penelope Wilcock

  February 2015

  The Community of

  St Alcuin’s Abbey

  Monks

  Brother Edward infirmarian

  Father Chad prior

  Father Columba abbot – known as Father Peregrine

  Father Lucanus elderly brother briefly mentioned

  Brother John works in the infirmary

  Brother Gilbert precentor

  Brother Cyprian porter

  Father Matthew novice master

  Brother Walafrid herbalist/winemaker

  Brother Giles assistant herbalist

  Brother Michael assistant cook/infirmary

  Brother Andrew cook

  Brother Ambrose cellarer

  Brother Clement works in the scriptorium and library

  Brother Fidelis gardener, with special care of the roses

  Brother Peter cares for the horses

  Brother Mark beekeeper

  Brother Stephen responsible for the farm

  Brother Martin porter (takes over from Brother Cyprian)

  Brother Paulinus gardener

  Brother Dominic guestmaster

  Brother Prudentius works on the farm

  Brother Basil elderly brother, assists in guest house

  Father Gerard almoner

  Novices and postulants

  Brother Thomas abbot’s esquire; also works on the farm

  Brother Francis works in a variety of locations

  Brother Theodore works mainly
as a scribe and illuminator

  Brother Cormac works in the kitchen

  Brother Thaddeus works in a variety of locations

  Gerard Plumley later Brother Bernard

  Brother Richard

  Brother Damian

  Brother Josephus

  Brother James

  Sick or aged brothers living in the infirmary

  Brother Denis once the beekeeper

  Father Aelred in infirmary – not mentioned in this book

  Father Anselm in infirmary – not mentioned in this book

  Father Paul in infirmary – not mentioned in this book

  Father Gerald in infirmary – not mentioned in this book

  CHAPTER ONE

  Mother

  I wish you had known my mother. I remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday, toiling up the hill at the end of the school day, towards the group of mothers who stood at the crest of the rise, waiting to collect their children from the county primary school where my little sisters went.

  The mothers chatted together, plump and comfortable, wearing modest, flowery dresses, pretty low-heeled sandals, their hair curled and tinted, and just that little bit of make-up to face the world in. Some had pushchairs with wriggling toddlers. Together, they smiled and nodded and gossipped and giggled, young and friendly and kind…. But there at the top of the hill, at a little distance from all the rest, stood my mother, as tall and straight and composed as a prophet, her great blue skirt flapping in the breeze, her thick brown hair tumbling down her back. By her side stood my littlest sister, her hand nestling confidingly in my mother’s hand, her world still sheltered in the folds of that blue skirt from the raw and bewildering society of the playground.

  My mother. She was not a pretty woman, and never thought to try and make herself so. She had an uncompromising chin, firm lips, a nose like a hawk’s beak and unnerving grey eyes. Eyes that went straight past the outside of you and into the middle, which meant that you could relax about the torn jersey, the undone shoe laces, the tangled hair and the unwashed hands at the dinner table, but you had to feel very uncomfortable indeed about the stolen sweets, the broken promise, and the unkind way you ran away from a little sister striving to follow you on her short legs. My mother. Often, after tea, she would stand at the sink, having cleared away the tea things, just looking out of the windows at the seagulls riding the air-currents on the evening sky; her hands still, her work forgotten, a faraway expression in her eyes.

  Therese and I would do our homework after tea, sitting at the tea-table in the kitchen. The three little ones would play out of doors until the light was failing, and then Mother would call them in, littlest first, and bath them in the lean-to bathroom at the back of the kitchen, brush their hair and clean their teeth, help them on with their nightgowns, and tuck them in to bed.

  This was the moment of decision for Therese and me. Ours was a little house in a terrace of shabby houses that clung to a hillside by the sea, and we had only two bedrooms, so all five of us sisters slept in the same room on mattresses side by side on the floor. Mother hated electric light—she said it assaulted the sleepy soul and drove the sandman away, and when the little ones were ready for bed, she would tuck in Mary and Beth, and light the candle and sit down with Cecily, the littlest one, in the low comfortable chair in the corner of the room. If she put them to bed and left them, there would be pandemonium. Cecily would not stay in bed at all and romped gaily about the room, and Beth and Mary would begin to argue, starting with a simple remark like ‘Beth, I can’t get to sleep with you sniffing,’ and finishing with a general commotion of crying and quarrelling.

  So Mother resigned herself to stay with them as they fell asleep, and she sat, with the littlest one snuggled on her lap, in the room dimly glowing with candle-light, softly astir with the breathing and sighing and turning over of children settling for the night.

  Therese and I, at sixteen and fourteen years old, had to choose between staying alone downstairs to read a book or paint or gaze into the fire; and creeping upstairs with the little ones, to sit with Mother in the candlelight, and listen to her lullabies.

  Most often, Therese stayed down, but I crept upstairs to Mother and lay on my bed, gazing at the candle as the flame dipped and rose with the draught, watching the shadows as they trembled and moved about the ceiling. After a while, as we kept our quiet, shadowy vigil, I would whisper, ‘Mother, tell me a story.’

  I was just beginning to ask questions, to search for a way of looking at things that would make sense. The easy gaiety and simple sorrows of childhood had been swallowed up and lost in a hungry emptiness, a search for meaning that nothing seemed to satisfy. At school, I was only a number, a non-person. They could answer my questions about the theory of relativity and whether it was permissible in modern English to split an infinitive: but when it came to the great, lonely yearning that was opening up inside me, they didn’t seem even to want to hear the question, let alone try to answer it. I went to church every Sunday, and I listened to what they said about Jesus, and I believed it all, I really did; but was there anyone anywhere who cared about it enough to behave as if it were true? I felt disenchanted.

  I began to wonder, as spring wore on to summer in that my fifteenth year, if I would ever meet anyone who could look me in the eye, who could say sorry without making a joke of it, who could cry without embarrassment, have a row and still stay friends. As for mentioning the word ‘love’, well… it provoked sniggers, not much else. The hunger of it all ached inside me. Maybe Mother knew. Maybe she could guess what I never told her, could not even tell myself; that I was desperate for something more than smiles and jokes and surfaces; that I was beginning to wonder if it was possible to stretch out your hand in the darkness and find it grasped by another hand, not evaded, rejected, or ignored.

  So I wish you had known my mother. I wish you could hear the stories she told in her quiet, thoughtful voice. I wish I could take you into the magic of that breathing, candlelit room, which she filled with people and strange ways from long ago. I wish I could remember all of them to tell you, but years have gone by now, and I am not sure of everything she said. But for the times you, too, have a quiet moment, and need to unhook your mind from the burden of the day, here are some of the stories my mother told me. They are the stories she told me the year I turned fifteen.

  Mother said these stories were true, and I never knew her to tell a lie… but then you could never be quite sure what she meant by ‘truth’; fact didn’t always come into it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Father Columba

  When I was a girl, a bit younger than you (my mother began) I had someone to tell me stories, too. It wasn’t my mother who told me stories though, it was my great-grandmother, and her name was Melissa, like yours. Great-grandmother Melissa told me all sorts of stories, stories about my uncles and cousins, about my great-aunt Alice who was a painter and lived in a little stone cottage at Bell Busk in Yorkshire. Old Aunt Alice’s cottage was one of a row of terraced cottages, all the same except that Aunt Alice’s was painted in psychedelic colours.

  Great-grandmother Melissa told me about my auntie’s duck that had four legs—and she took me to see it too. She told me about one of my far-off ancestors, who was found on the doorstep as a tiny baby, in a shopping bag. She told me about my cousin’s dog Russ, who bit off a carol-singer’s finger, and about my grandfather’s dog that had to be put down because it loved him so much it went out one night and killed twenty hens and piled them all up on his doorstep. She told me about how she and her sisters took it in turns to pierce each others’ ears with a needle and a cork, and socks stuffed in their mouths to stop them screaming, so that their mother wouldn’t find out what they’d done. All kinds of tales she told me, and all about our family. But the ones I liked best were about a monastery long ago. These stories had been handed down, grandmother to granddaughter, for seven hundred years. They came from a long ago great-uncle Edward, who lived to be nearly a hundred, and
was a very wise old man.

  At the end of his life, when his blue eyes were faded and his skin was wrinkled, and his hair reduced to white wisps about his bald head (although he had the bushiest of eyebrows and whiskers that grew down his nose), Uncle Edward would while away his days telling stories to his visitors. The one who had the stories from him was his great-niece—she was a Melissa too. This Melissa began handing down the stories, and they came down through the generations until my great-grandmother, in the evening of her life, as she came into the twilight, would sit with me and tell me that long ago Uncle Edward’s stories. And now I will tell them to you.

  Great-uncle Edward was a monk, at the Benedictine abbey of St Alcuin, on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. He had been a wandering friar in the order of the blessed Francis of Assisi, and had spent his life roaming the countryside, preaching the gospel. But as time went by, and his sixtieth birthday came and went, he felt a need for a more settled life. So after forty years of preaching throughout the English shires, he entered the community of Benedictines at St Alcuin’s Abbey in Yorkshire, far away from his family home near Ely, but just as cold and windy. Great-uncle Edward (now Brother Edward) was made the infirmarian of the abbey—that is to say, he took care of the monks when they were ill—for in his wandering days with the Franciscan friars, he had picked up a wealth of healing lore. He was skilled in the use of tisanes and poultices, herbal salves and spiced wines and aromatic oils, and he could set a bone or repair a wound as well as any man. So he settled down at St Alcuin’s, and gave himself to the work of nursing the sick and caring for the old under the Rule of Life of St Benedict.

  In the year 1303—Brother Edward’s sixty-sixth—when he had been four years at the abbey, the good old abbot of the monastery, Father Gregory of the Resurrection, died peacefully in his sleep with a smile on his face, overburdened with years and glad to enter into the peace of the blessed. The brothers were sorry to lose him, for he had ruled them gently, with kindness and authority, knowing how to mingle mercy with justice so as to get the best out of his flock and lead them in their life of work and prayer. The sorriest of all was Father Chad, the prior of the monastery, second-in-command under the abbot, upon whose shoulders now fell the burden of responsibility for the community until they had a new abbot. Father Chad was a shy, quiet man, a man of prayer, a man of few words—a gentle, retiring man. He was not a leader of men. He had no idea why he had been chosen to be prior and was horrified to find the greatness of the abbacy thrust upon him. With a small sigh of regret he left the snug prior’s cell, which was built against the warm chimney of the brothers’ community room, the warming room, and installed himself in the large, draughty apartment which was the abbot’s lodging. Day and night he prayed that God would send a new abbot soon, and day and night he prayed that they wouldn’t choose him.