The Long Fall Read online

  “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

  The Long Fall

  PENELOPE WILCOCK

  Text copyright © 1993 by 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 143 8

  e-ISBN 978 1 78264 144 5

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

  Cover illustration © Brian Gallagher

  Contents

  The Community of St Alcuin’s Abbey

  Chapter One: The Last of the Summer

  Chapter Two: The Wake of the Storm

  Chapter Three: Picking up the Pieces

  Chapter Four: Out of Silence

  Chapter Five: A Promise

  Chapter Six: Sore

  Chapter Seven: The Course Run

  Chapter Eight: Winter

  Glossary of Terms

  Monastic Day

  Liturgical Calendar

  For

  Mark and Gill Barrett

  The Community of St Alcuin’s Abbey

  Monks

  Brother John

  infirmarian

  Brother Michael

  assistant infirmarian

  Brother Edward

  helps in the infirmary

  Father Chad

  prior

  Father Columba

  abbot – known as Father Peregrine

  Brother Gilbert

  precentor

  Brother Thomas

  abbot’s esquire/works on the farm

  Brother Francis

  illuminator, to seminary

  Brother Walafrid

  herbalist/winemaker

  Brother Giles

  assistant herbalist

  Father Theodore

  novice master

  Brother Cormac

  works in the kitchen

  Brother Thaddeus

  assistant in the abbot’s house, works also in the pottery

  Brother Ambrose

  cellarer

  Brother Clement

  works in the scriptorium and library

  Brother Fidelis

  works in the garden

  Brother Peter

  cares for the horses, built wheelchair

  Brother Mark

  beekeeper

  Brother Stephen

  responsible for the farm

  Brother Martin

  porter

  Brother Paulinus

  gardener

  Brother Dominic

  guestmaster

  Brother Prudentius

  works on the farm

  Brother Basil

  bell ringer

  Brother Richard

  fraterer

  Brother Damian

  away at university

  Brother Josephus

  abbot’s assistant

  Brother James

  book binder, becomes university student

  Father Bernard

  cellarer in training

  Brother Germanus

  works on the farm

  Father Gerard

  almoner

  Novices and postulants

  The members of the novitiate are not mentioned in this book, but these are some of the brothers, who are in the novitiate in Book 4:

  Brother Benedict

  working in various locations

  Brother Boniface

  helping in the scriptorium

  Brother Cassian

  working in the school

  Brother Cedd

  helps in the scriptorium and robing room

  Brother Conradus

  responsibilities in the woodyard

  Brother Felix

  helps Father Gilbert

  Brother Placidus

  works in various locations

  Brother Robert

  assists in the pottery

  Sick or aged brothers living in the infirmary

  Brother Denis

  Father Aelred

  Father Anselm

  Father Paul

  Father Gerald

  Brother Cyprian

  Deceased community brethren mentioned in The Hawk and the Dove

  Father Gregory

  previous abbot of the community

  Brother Andrew

  cook

  Father Lucanus

  Assistants to the community

  Martin Jonson

  lay worker in the infirmary

  ‘The worst of partialities is to withhold oneself, the worst ignorance is not to act, the worst lie is to steal away.’

  Charles Péguy

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Last of the Summer

  July 22nd. The blackberries are in flower. Pink. They are pink, and I thought they were white; but these new, tender, thrusting shoots are burdened with clusters of tight, grey-green buds, a
nd here and there a flower of sharp pink.

  The raspberries grow thick and luscious this year, all that rain. It’s raining now: fat drops of rain spattering into the languid warmth of the evening, hissing in the flames of the bonfire. The honeysuckle sprawls over the fence, its sweet, heavy scent mingling with the woodsmoke. The fragrance of it in the warm, damp stillness of the evening is decadent, feminine, overpowering.

  The sage is in flower, its purple-blue petals shining brighter as afternoon drifts into dusk and the sun fades. The alkanet flowers too are bright stars of blue, and the dropping clusters of pink and blue comfrey flowers hang motionless from the thick, hairy stems. The elderflower is nearly finished now, the umbels of dense blossom give way to a plentiful load of berries. The roses are still a mad profusion of beauty, a good promise there too of fruit. Rose-hip syrup, elderberry cordial—there’ll be plenty for the winter.

  In the physic garden, the feverfew is a mass of yellow and white, and the calendula growing up radiant among it. Flowers, everywhere flowers. What a summer it’s been. The hay was half-ruined in the rain, just a bit left standing to come in. The grain harvests look good now, though, and the beans are looking healthy, which is just as well. There was nothing to them last year, and what we dried was scarce enough to eke through the winter months. Ah, but the honey will be good this year! The flowers ardent with life on their stems, nothing faded or limp. There should be enough nectar in there to put a smile on any bee’s face.

  Evening coming down now: a rumble of thunder threatening in the distance. The sound of the cows lowing as they come down from the pasture to the byre. Brother Stephen’s late with milking again, then. He needs more help, really, this time of year. Further away, the voices of the sheep on the hills. What must it be like to live where there are no sheep; not to hear the sound of the ewes calling their lambs, and the lonely cry of the curlew overhead, and the sweet, rising song of the lark?

  Brother Tom forked the last wayward straggles of leaves over the smoking fire. The Office bell was ringing for Compline. The wind changed, and the smoke from Tom’s bonfire engulfed him suddenly. He turned away choking, his eyes stinging with it.

  ‘Serves you right, standing here dreaming when you should be on your way to chapel,’ he told himself. He left the pitchfork leaning against the fence, and walked down through the garden to the abbey buildings. The bell had stopped ringing, but he was not hurrying even now. It just wasn’t that kind of evening.

  At thirty-three years old, Brother Tom had been a fully professed brother of St Alcuin’s Abbey on the edge of the Yorkshire moors for eleven years now, serving God under the Rule of St Benedict, learning the rhythm of spirituality which sees prayer as work and work as prayer. He had had his early struggles, like most men, but he was contented in the life now. His time was for the most part occupied with his duties in the abbot’s house, but he was a big, brawny man, raised on a farm, and there were not many days he let pass without doing some work out of doors in the garden, or on the farm, or up on the hill pastures at lambing time.

  He looked with satisfaction at the patch he had weeded, as he strolled down towards the cloister. He paused to tie up a white rose that was straggling across the path, the slender stem bowing under the weight of its blossom. He rummaged in his pocket for the end of twine that was in there somewhere, cut it in half with the knife that every brother kept in his belt for a hundred and one uses, and tied the rose back neatly. He bent to breathe in its perfume before he left it and disappeared into the passageway that led through to the cloister. There was a little door in the wall of the passage, through which he entered the vestry and sacristy of the abbey church.

  Tom stood for a moment, accustoming his eyes to the change as he left behind the dim fragrance of the summer dusk, and stepped into the chapel with its smells of stone and beeswax and incense, the echo of its silences widening out about him, an immense, deep cave of breathing dark.

  In the choir, the tranquil chant of the psalm was ringing. Tom listened carefully: ‘… frumenti, vini, et olei sui multiplicati sunt. In pace in idipsum dormiam…’

  ‘Faith, they’re on the last verse already,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I’d better move.’

  The reading from the Rule at the morning’s Chapter had been concerned with punctuality at the Office, and the abbot’s homily on the chapter they had heard had dwelt at some length on punctuality as a golden rule of courtesy, and courtesy as a jewel in the crown of Christian charity.

  Brother Tom had not listened to the homily with the closest attention, being familiar through long experience with this particular bee in his abbot’s bonnet. Anything that Father Peregrine took to be a necessity for courtesy was insisted upon punctiliously. Brother Tom, having held the obedience of abbot’s esquire for eleven years now, had heard a great deal in the course of time on the subject of courtesy and punctuality.

  He moved briskly across the Lady Chapel into the choir, and slid into his place with an appropriately submissive air just as they were singing the final phrase of the Gloria from the first psalm. He could not, then, technically be said to be late, but it was only by the skin of his teeth. He could feel his abbot’s eyes on him, and risked a glance at him. Father Peregrine was shaking his head at him in disapproval, but the amusement and affection in his face were plain enough. Brother Tom knew better than to presume on it though, and bent his head meekly, joining in the chant of the psalm: ‘Non accedet ad te malum: et flagelum non approprinquabit tabemaculo tuo. Quoniam angelis suis mandavit de te: ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis…’ (‘Upon you no evil shall fall: no plague approach where you dwell. For you has he commanded his angels: to keep you in all your ways…’)

  Brother Tom had often wondered what his abbot made of the promises of that psalm, and all the other promises like it that were scattered throughout the Scriptures. How did Father Peregrine feel when he sang those words, Brother Tom wondered; Father Peregrine whose left leg had been lamed and his hands crippled by an attack of thugs. He had borne the disablement thirteen years now, limping about the place on a crutch, struggling with the handicap of his awkward, deformed hands; yet he sang those promises in the psalm with equanimity.

  Brother Tom wondered if the abbot’s soul ever raged against God, ‘Where was your protection when I needed you? Where were your angels for me?’ Probably; but he kept such things, like most things, to himself. Brother Tom sighed. He loved his abbot, but being his personal attendant was no easy job. He was not an easy man, with the storm and fire of his moods, the quick flare of his temper, and his high standards of spirituality. Still, Tom knew no one like him for compassion and tenderness when a man was broken by grief, or weariness, or defeated by weakness and despair. It was that particular quality of his gentleness with men in trouble that betrayed the nightmare of his own suffering. But—did his soul ever rage against God? Tom wondered. Maybe not. Father Peregrine’s favourite text from the whole of Scripture was Pilate’s brief sentence ‘Ecce homo,’ ‘Behold the man’; spoken as Pilate brought out the flogged and battered figure of Jesus, decorated with Roman spittle, crowned with thorns. Behold the man, Emmanuel, God with us. Tom had heard Father Peregrine recall the minds of the brethren again and again to this living icon of the love of God. Maybe he regarded his sufferings as some kind of offering to this wounded deity.

  ‘He is the God of the broken heart,’ the abbot would tell his monks, ‘the God of the bruised spirit, and the shattered body. Those are his shrines where the power of his presence dwells, not the relics of the dead or the altars built by human hands.’

  Tom looked across the chapel at him now. He looked weary. He always looked weary. Last night when Brother Tom had got out of bed at the ringing of the bell for the Night Office, he had looked for his abbot, whose chamber he shared, and found his bed not slept in. As he passed to the cloister through the great room which was Father Peregrine’s centre of operations, he found him rising stiffly from his table spread with plans and accounts relating to the abb
ey farm. It was the same in the morning when the bell was ringing for Prime and the morrow Mass.

  Brother Tom had scolded his superior as he washed him and shaved him before they went into Chapter.

  ‘You’re fussy enough about everyone else keeping the rules, you should keep them yourself. Any other brother in this house that drove himself as you do, and wasn’t in his bed where he ought to be at night, and you’d be on his back like a ton of bricks. What’s so special about you?’

  ‘I’m the abbot of this community; that’s what’s so special about me. If I don’t get all this business about the farm buildings right, we shall be into debt again, and have I not worked these fifteen years to get this community back into solvency and keep us that way?’

  Brother Tom washed the last traces of soap from his abbot’s face.

  ‘You look a wreck. Your eyes are that shadowed you look as though you’ve been in a fight. You’re losing weight. You look horrible. You’re sixty years old this September, you can’t go burning the candle at both ends at your time of life. You’ll make yourself ill—you will, don’t look at me like that. You’re a monk. You’re supposed to be humble and put your trust in God and go to bed at night and eat up your dinner like a good lad. If I were your superior instead of you mine, I’d bawl you out for your flouting of the Rule.’

  ‘My superior? Since when have you wanted to be my superior to bawl me out? Hark at you! Brother Thomas, I swear living with you is like being married without any of the fun. Peace, man, for pity’s sake. Come now, will you carry some of these documents to Chapter for me? I’ll be here with them today with Brother Ambrose and everyone who knows the details of it, but I must give some indication to the community of what we’re about.’