The Breath of Peace Read online

  “Years ago, I read Pen’s first book and knew that she was a fine writer. She still is. The combination of impeccable research and relational and spiritual adventure is irresitible. We are in a real place wih real people. A feast of characters and ideas.”

  Adrian Plass, author, The Sacred Diary series

  Other titles in the Hawk and the Dove series:

  The Hawk and the Dove

  The Wounds of God

  The Long Fall

  The Hardest Thing to Do

  The Hour Before Dawn

  Remember Me

  The Breath of Peace

  The Beautiful Thread

  A Day and a Life (coming June 2016)

  Text copyright © 2013 Penelope Wilcock

  This edition copyright © 2016 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 Monarch Books

  an imprint of

  Lion Hudson plc

  Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road,

  Oxford OX2 8DR, England

  www.lionhudson.com/fiction

  ISBN 978 1 78264 173 5

  e-ISBN 978 1 78264 174 2

  This edition 2016

  Acknowledgments

  Scripture quotations marked NIV taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version Anglicised. Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 Biblica, formerly International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. “NIV” is a registered trademark of Biblica. UK trademark number 1448790.

  Scripture quotations marked KJV taken from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge

  University Press.

  Cover image © Brian Gallagher

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

  For my dear friend Kay Bradbury who prayed me through the

  writing of so many stories.

  Again Jesus said, ‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that he breathed on them…

  John 20:21 NIV

  I am the fool whose life’s been spent between what’s said and what is meant.

  Carrie Newcomer

  If you want to create evil in the world, all you have to do is pick on a little kid.

  Clay Garner

  Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’

  Mary Anne Radmacher

  Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.

  Robert Brault

  Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

  Jesus of Nazareth – John 14:27 KJV

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Community of St Alcuin’s Abbey

  Acknowledgments

  Notes on the Text

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Glossary of Terms

  Monastic Day

  Liturgical Calendar

  The Community of

  St Alcuin’s Abbey

  (Not all members are mentioned in The Breath of Peace)

  Fully professed monks

  Abbot John Hazell once the abbey’s infirmarian

  Father Francis prior

  Brother Ambrose cellarer

  Father Theodore novice master

  Father Gilbert precentor

  Father Clement overseer of the scriptorium

  Father Dominic guest master

  Brother Thomas abbot’s esquire, also involved with the farm and building repairs

  Father Francis scribe

  Father Bernard sacristan

  Brother Martin porter

  Brother Thaddeus potter

  Brother Michael infirmarian

  Brother Damian helps in the infirmary

  Brother Cormac kitchener

  Brother Conradus assists in the kitchen

  Brother Richard fraterer

  Brother Stephen oversees the abbey farm

  Brother Peter ostler

  Father Gerard almoner

  Brother Josephus acted as esquire for Father Chad between abbots; now working in the abbey school

  Brother Germanus has worked on the farm, occupied in the wood yard and gardens

  Brother Mark too old for taxing occupation, but keeps the bees

  Brother Paulinus works in the kitchen garden and orchards

  Brother Prudentius now old, helps on the farm and in the kitchen garden and orchards

  Brother Fidelis now old, oversees the flower gardens

  Father James makes and mends robes, occasionally works in the scriptorium

  Brother Walafrid herbalist, oversees the brew house

  Brother Giles assists Brother Walafrid and works in the laundry

  Brother Basil old, assists the sacristan – ringing the bell for the office hours, etc.

  Fully professed monks now confined to the infirmary through frailty of old age

  Father Gerald once sacristan

  Brother Denis once a scribe

  Father Paul once precentor

  Brother Edward onetime infirmarian, now living in the infirmary but active enough to help there and occasionally attend Chapter and the daytime hours of worship

  Novices

  Brother Benedict assists in the infirmary

  Brother Boniface helps in the scriptorium

  Brother Cassian works in the school

  Brother Cedd helps in the scriptorium and when required in the robing room

  Brother Felix helps Father Gilbert

  Brother Placidus helps on the farm

  Brother Robert assists in the pottery

  Members of the community mentioned in earlier stories and now deceased

  Abbot Gregory of the Resurrection

  Abbot Columba du Fayel (also known as Father Peregrine)

  Father Matthew novice master

  Brother Cyprian porter

  Father Aelred choolmaster

  Father Lucanus novice master before Father Matthew

  Father Anselm once robe-maker

  Brother Andrew kitchener

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer for allowing me to use the quotation from her song at the start of this book. Musicians are notoriously sticky about allowing song quotations, and she was very gracious in permitting me to do so. Information about Carrie’s work can be found at CarrieNewcomer.com.

  Notes on the Text

  A note from the author on fourteenth-century English…

  Once or twice, in a review or a passing comment, someone has remarked that occasionally this author loses her grip on fourteenth-century English, or that a word or phrase is used that seems out of place for the fourteenth century. Because I think readers may not always immediately see what I am doing here, I thought an explanatory note might be helpful.

  The Hawk and the Dove series is set in the 1300s, and if it were written in fourteenth-century English, it would read something like this:

  Fowles in the frith,

  The fisshes in the flood,

  And I mon waxe wood

  Much sorwe I walke with

  For beste of boon and blood.

  Or this:

  But nathelees, whil I have tyme and space,

  Er that I ferther in this tale pace,

  Me thynketh it acordaunt to resound

  To telle yow al the condicioun

  Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,

  And whiche they weren, and of what degree,

  And eek in what array that they were inne;

  And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.

  Now, that would be fun! I would relish the challenge of employing my studies of English literature through the ages, and creating a modern novel written entirely in Middle English. The only snag would be that no one would want to read it, and even they thatte started wolde gyve up in a litel space, ywys, I wot it roghte wele.

  So the challenge I took up instead of that one, was how to write novels set in the fourteenth century that allowed the modern reader to enter that world as if it were familiar territory.

  Reading Shakespeare, and Chaucer, and the seventeenth-century poets George Herbert and John Donne, something that strikes me every time is the vivid homeliness of their language. The images are domestic and friendly, down to earth somehow, connecting the writer to readers of any era with an almost startling immediacy.

  Here’s Donne tackling the teasing art of seduction by writing about a flea:

  Marke but this flea, and marke in this,

  How little that which
thou deny’st me is;

  Me it suck’d first, and now sucks thee,

  And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee…

  And here’s George Herbert, with holier matters in mind, writing in 1633, in his poem The Elixir, about the transformative power of undertaking lowly tasks ‘for Thy sake’:

  A servant with this clause

  Makes drudgerie divine

  Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws

  Makes that and th’action fine.

  There is a forthrightness, an earthiness, a picturesque domesticity about the handling of language throughout the middle ages right up to the eighteenth century, at which point the age of enlightenment kicked in to make a change of emphasis.

  In writing The Hawk and the Dove series, I have tried to capture not medieval usage of language, but medieval flavour – the drollery of its wit, the warmth and immediacy of its style.

  In practice this means knotting and weaving modern phraseology into a net capable of catching that elusive earthy quality. So, for example, in this book (The Breath of Peace) there is a riff running about William’s ‘scary eyes’. In terms of the story, this works with the purpose of continuing the process, wrought over the course of the previous three novels, of allowing the reader to follow through deepening insight into a character whose presenting face is essentially unlikeable. Theologically, this is about redemption beginning with learning to love the unlovely – the heart of compassion and the nature of grace: ‘while we were yet sinners…’ (Romans 5:8). In introducing the question of the ‘scary eyes’, the theme of learning to see things from someone else’s point of view begun in The Hardest Thing To Do is taken to the level of being actually behind or within the eyes of the individual whose gaze is threatening, disturbing and unsettling – and realizing that to that person the unnerving gaze is unintentional; and in any case he is the one person in the world who has no means of experiencing or perceiving it.

  But the term ‘scary’ has a very modern ring to it. So the question I tossed about for a while was whether to avoid the modern idiom, or use it in this case. I decided to use it because the modern reader, familiar with it in daily speech, would grasp immediately its affectionate and less than serious application. If someone says to you, ‘You have scary eyes!’ they are not taking you entirely seriously – it’s meant, but it’s slightly teasing. The phrase originates with Madeleine in this story, and allows the reader to keep the awareness that William has a disquieting presence – even his wife finds him somewhat unnerving at times – while at the same time moving closer into this vulnerable and damaged person beset by the fears and shame that overrun his inner world.

  ‘Scary’ is flippant, teasing, affectionate, light, gently mocking – and, familiar with these nuances in daily speech, a reader will instantly catch these resonances. But how does this sit with a fourteenth-century context? Of course this exact use of ‘scary’ does not carry over from the modern day to the fourteenth century, but the flavour – the gentle mockery, the teasing – does. To use an archaic form would have the disadvantage of imparting a mannered and wooden quality to the interaction, which was precisely the thing I wanted to avoid. Madeleine speaks to William within a relationship of intimacy – an intimacy further underlined by his being a man so very hard for anyone to get close to. Use of a term stiffened by the distance of history would not do here. The idiom is modern, but used with the purpose of bringing to life for the modern reader a domestic relationship from a distant historical context.

  Similarly I will use phrases like ‘not the sharpest knife in the box’ or ‘what are you like?’, ‘does my head in’ or ‘I see where you’re coming from’ or ‘get a grip’, because there is no inherent reason why they could not have been formulated in the middle ages – they don’t rely on a specific historical context in the way that ‘on the level’ (a phrase imported from Freemasonry) or ‘all guns blazing’ (obviously post-medieval) or ‘nineteen to the dozen’ (from the nineteenth-century Cornish tin mines) would do.

  On the other hand, when one of the people working editorially on the text, for one of the earlier novels, suggested that I put in the mouth of Abbot John the words ‘Are you kidding?’ I rejected that instinctually, because it has the wrong flavour – it is too American, too modern, too specifically rooted in our contemporary world – and because there are other words – jesting, joking, etc. – that serve the exact same purpose without stepping out of the medieval world.

  Modern idiom in these novels is primarily chosen where it serves the purpose of conveying nuances of relationship – because these novels are about the delicate intermingling of gritty, earthy, difficult daily relationship in community with the leavening, beautifying, fragrant threads and root-hairs of divine grace.

  The great cause of writing fiction is to weave a bag to carry truth. It is a means of bringing truth home. The art of storytelling is to present a context ‘long ago and far away’, allowing us to examine without feeling defensive the issues that belong to our lives, our dilemmas, our day. The marriage of the far-away and the here-and-now is achieved by the use of language. The Hawk and the Dove series comes from the days of fire and stone, of ox-carts and rushlights, the days before tomatoes and potatoes were on the menu: but the stories in it are yours and mine, and what we rely on to make the bridge is the way in which language is used.

  My first love as a reader and as a writer is poetry – I came only gradually to prose and have learned to love the handling of it more slowly. Thus I write first and foremost as a poet, balancing the word-music and cadences of every sentence, sitting with a thesaurus always open in search of words that convey not approximately but precisely the heart-meaning of the trail of grace I am trying to coax the reader along – until you can see it; until a man’s weeping makes your belly contract with his, until his quiet joke and sly grin stays with you, and makes you smile as you remember it while you’re in your kitchen chopping vegetables for your supper.

  Nobody could know better than I do that I cannot always have got the balance right – that sometimes my choices of modern idiom may have been ill-advised, and my research of an immersion into the medieval and monastic world is sometimes patchy and incomplete. But it has been a study and a love affair of a lifetime, and in this series of novels I give it my best shot.

  Chapter

  One

  An owl hooted, soft and eerie, in the blackness between the dripping trees that bordered and hung menacing over the lane. She took in the sound, and then she stopped dead. That was wrong. No owl perched so low. It was a signal. It was a man. Her heart thundered, battering erratic, high in her chest. Again the low, unearthly call floated through the cold mist. Madeleine stood trembling, sick with terror, her knees shaking, unable to move. How many of them were there? Footpads? Thieves? Or worse?

  She almost fainted as she saw the human clot of shadow emerge from the trees against the wall.

  ‘Who goes there?’ She tried to sound sharp and challenging, but her voice shook with undisguisable fear.

  As the man came towards her, she could not run, could do nothing; blind panic stopped her throat and then in the glimmers of moonlight shining fitful through the trees she recognized a familiar outline and gait in the vague shape approaching her… ‘W-W-William?’ She could hardly gasp out the question.

  ‘Oh, my sweet, did I scare you?’

  And relief drained every ounce of strength from her so that she all but collapsed into his arms.

  ‘My darling!’ He was laughing at the situation, holding her close to him, laughing: ‘My darling, it’s only me!’

  It was the laughter that did it. Incoherent rage took hold of her, and she pulled back from his arms.

  ‘What a stupid, stupid thing to do! It isn’t funny! How was I supposed to know it was you? You frightened the wits out of me! It could have been anybody standing there in the trees! Why didn’t you bring a lantern anyway? What did you think you were doing, crouched in the hedgerow mooing like a cow fallen in the ditch?’

  ‘I wasn’t mooing. I was being an owl!’

  ‘An owl? Oh, Lord! You almost scared the life out of me! All I knew, standing there in the dark, was that someone, something – some fell being, I knew not what, but no owl – was hiding in the trees! Saints alive, William de Bulmer – what kind of man are you?’