The Hawk and the Dove Read online

  Cormac looked at him. ‘He did it for me,’ he thought.

  ‘It’s on your right hand,’ he said. ‘How did you come to cut your right hand?’

  ‘My right hand was getting a cramp trying to hold the knife, so I thought I’d try if I could do it better with the left. I learned to my cost that they may neither of them work, but I’m still a very right-handed man!’

  Cormac straightened the fingers gently and examined the little burns, cuts and sore places. ‘For me,’ he thought, ‘and not only that, but the sharp orders that made him look clumsy and foolish and in the way.’ He remembered Brother Andrew’s irritation: ‘It’s worse than having a child around the place!’ and Brother Michael’s distress: ‘He had tears in his eyes.’

  Cormac said nothing, but he gently salved the sore places, carefully disinfected and bandaged the cut, then worked over the whole hand as he’d been shown. This time he was seeing with his fingers, as Brother Edward had tried to teach him to do, finding the places where muscles were cramped and knotted, easing them out. When he had finished, he got to his feet and turned away without looking at Peregrine’s face, and made himself busy putting away oils and salves and lint.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Father Peregrine quietly. ‘Thank you for your healing love.’

  Cormac looked at him a moment, then shook his head. Then, ‘I’ll be wanted back in the kitchen,’ he said, and he left them.

  ‘Whatever happened to him?’ said Father Peregrine. ‘Where on earth has this gentleness come from? Brother Edward, you’ve had a hand in this, I suspect.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Edward. ‘I think it was more likely your hands.’

  ‘Well, whatever it was, thank God for it. I couldn’t have stood too many more mornings like this one. Now then, I must go and find Brother Andrew. Thank you for your care, Brother.’

  He found Brother Andrew waiting for him in the abbot’s house, ill at ease out of his own domain, looking older and less autocratic away from his little kingdom in the kitchen.

  ‘Sit down, Brother, that’s right. I’ll come straight to the point. I know you have work to do, and so do I. This concerns Brother Cormac, as I expect you realise. To be blunt, Brother, you have treated him abominably. Your insensitivity and unimaginative dealing with him is shameful. I have never heard a monk speak with less courtesy and more rudeness than you do. You deliberately provoke him by miscalling his name, and that is inexcusable. Also, it is thoughtless and unkind to ask him to prepare meat unless it is absolutely necessary. You know well what a revolting task it is to him. Well? What have you to say?’

  Brother Andrew sat rigidly still, looking down, mortified. Away from the pressure of work in the kitchen, away from the aggravation of Cormac’s hostility and unwillingness, he saw his own behaviour in a different light.

  ‘I have nothing to say,’ he mumbled. ‘What can I say?’

  ‘You will confess your fault at chapter in the morning. From now on, this has to stop. If you cannot find it in your heart to love, you can at least keep a civil tongue in your head. Have you understood me?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Thank you. You can go.’

  Brother Andrew forced himself to look at Peregrine and was startled to see nothing but gentleness and concern in the eyes that looked back at him, where he had expected cold rebuke.

  ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ he said humbly. ‘Truly I didn’t think about the meat, but for the rest, it’s true what you say, I admit it. I’ll try to mend my ways.’

  Father Peregrine nodded and watched the old man with affection as he went on his way. ‘He wants to mend his ways, Lord,’ he prayed silently as Brother Andrew closed the door. ‘He’ll need your help, then. That the habits of a lifetime were so easily undone! But you can’t help loving the peppery old codger. O Christ, be the bridge between them, stubborn men both and proud. It was a privilege to feel Cormac’s gentleness, but if you could divert a crumb, just a crumb of it from me to Andrew, it would make life so much easier.’ He sighed. ‘And who am I, that I should be asking you of all people for an easy life? As you think best then Lord, but only, give me patience when my own runs out….’

  Brother Cormac had gone from the infirmary to the kitchen, which was empty now in the quiet time after the meal. He sat on a stool by a work bench, thinking, for a long while. Hearing the door open, he looked up, and seeing Brother Andrew, stiffened at once against anticipated sarcasm and hostility.

  ‘Brother Cormac, I was looking for you,’ Andrew said. ‘Father Abbot has just been speaking to me. Scolding me, really. He says I’ve treated you rudely and insensitively. He rebuked me for miscalling your name. Brother, I’m sorry. I truly didn’t think when I asked you to cut up that ox tongue. I’m sorry about your name, Brother Cormac, and for all my rudeness, I am sorry.’

  Cormac was stunned. He sat and looked at him for a moment, an anxious, contrite old man, unsure of his reception, not an ogre, not to be despised. He jumped off his stool and flung his arms impulsively around his enemy. It is hard to say which of them was more amazed by his action, ‘Me too,’ Cormac said as he hugged him, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘For pity’s sake, Brother,’ flustered Andrew, disentangling himself, ‘calm yourself! Sit you down, for heaven’s sake, you wild, unpredictable, Irish whirlwind. What’s all this?’

  He listened soberly as Cormac recounted what Edward had told him. ‘You mean he came here, not for himself, but for us? Oh, Brother, I was never more ashamed of myself in my life. Whatever should we do?’

  Cormac looked at him shyly. ‘Make our peace?’ he suggested, with a small grin, the second in one day.

  From that day onwards, Brother Andrew and Brother Cormac were friends, and there grew between them a bond of affection and understanding which transformed the two touchy, hot-tempered, and—underneath it—lonely characters. Not that they were always polite to each other.

  Father Peregrine was passing the kitchen six weeks later, at the busy time just before lunch. Brother Cormac was strolling down the corridor ahead of him, late for work, and entered the kitchen as Peregrine passed.

  ‘Where the devil have you been, you good-for-nothing Irish rascal?’ roared an indignant voice.

  ‘I came the pretty way,’ came the nonchalant reply.

  Father Peregrine smiled and shook his head as he continued on his way.

  Mother leaned forward on her chair and prodded the fire with the long brass poker. A shower of sparks flew up and the soft white ash fell in the grate. She put another log on. Gingerly, I blew my sore, hot nose.

  ‘He always seemed to hurt himself, Mother.’

  ‘Yes, I know what you mean, my love,’ she said reflectively. ‘I think there were two reasons for that. One was simply that a man with broken hands can’t protect himself, or manage tools and things as well as we can. But also, it was because he wanted so much to be like Jesus, he wasn’t afraid to put himself in the place where he was vulnerable to hurt.

  ‘Oh, Melissa! Look at the time! There’ll be nothing for tea if I don’t get cracking! I shall have to go and meet Mary and Beth in half an hour, and they’ll all be famished in this cold weather!’ And she leapt to her feet and disappeared into the kitchen.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Beginning Again

  The year had rolled to its close. New Year’s Eve was a night of tingling frost, the stars shining sharp and bright in a cloudless sky, the moon riding clear and lovely in the heavens.

  Huddled in my dressing-gown and a woollen shawl, I stood in the garden with Therese and Mother and Daddy, waiting to welcome in the New Year. The little ones had gone to bed late, and were now tucked up fast asleep, clutching their new Christmas dollies. They were snuggled in under extra blankets, their mattresses pushed close together so they could keep each other warm. I was sleepy too but would not have missed the magic of this moment for anything.

  In the morning, we would wake up to windows decorated with frost flowers, all the grass and skeletal bushes i
n the garden would be stiff with hoar frost. The end of my nose and the tops of my ears hurt in the biting cold. I breathed out into the midnight air, and in the moonlight the impressive, ghostly cloud looked like a dragon’s breath.

  Far away, but clear and sonorous on the cold, still air, the church clock began to chime midnight. Distant, but perfectly distinct, we counted the twelve strokes and then stood there a moment on the silent moonlit threshold of another year.

  ‘Happy New Year!’ Daddy’s cheerful voice lifted the moment from solemnity and awe to party-time. ‘Come indoors, ladies! I have some hot mulled wine and some goodies for you.’

  We sat and sipped and munched by the fire, the room lit by candles at Mother’s pleading, instead of the electric light. After a while Daddy stretched and yawned. ‘I’m for bed,’ he said, in sleepy contentment.

  ‘I’ll follow you soon,’ said Mother. ‘Warm up the bed for me.’

  He and Therese took the glasses and the plates out into the kitchen, and we could hear Daddy’s heavy tread going slowly up the narrow stairs, and the chinking of glass and crockery as Therese washed up. We heard her fill the kettle for her hot-water bottle, and then shortly after, she put her head round the door to say goodnight.

  ‘Goodnight, Therese,’ said Mother. ‘Thank you for washing up. Happy New Year.’

  ‘Happy New Year. I’ll put the hot-water bottle in your bed, ‘lissa, when I’m warm, if you’re not coming up straight away.’

  I smiled my thanks, and we sat, watching the fire, Mother and I, listening to Therese’s footsteps mounting the stairs. There was no sound but the ticking of the clock and the settling of the glowing logs.

  ‘What are you thinking, Mother?’ I said.

  She stirred in her chair and sighed. ‘It’s a funny thing,’ she said thoughtfully, looking with wide, faraway eyes into the low, red flames. ‘The thing life is fullest of is the thing we find hardest to believe in. New beginnings. The incredible gift of a fresh start. Every new year. Every new day. Every new life. What wonderful gifts! And when we spoil things, and life goes all wrong, we feel dismayed, because we find it so hard to see that we can start again. God lets us share it too, you know. Only God can give life, it’s true—make a new baby or a new year—but he gives us the power to give each other a new beginning, to forgive each other and make a fresh start when things go wrong.’

  She fell silent, thinking, then she started to smile. ‘That reminds me—yes, I hadn’t thought of that for a long time. Poor Brother Tom! Oh, that was a bad evening…’

  She laughed, and I looked at her impatiently. Five minutes ago I had thought I was sleepy, but I felt wide awake now. ‘Oh, come on, Mother, tell me, then! What happened?’

  She glanced up at the clock and hesitated.

  ‘Oh, you’ve got to tell me now!’ I cried. ‘What about Brother Tom? What happened?’

  ‘Ssh, all right then, pipe down. I’ll tell you the story. Put another log on the fire, though, first.’

  She watched me as I pushed the little apple log into the heart of the fire, then she began.

  It was the year of our Lord 1316. King Edward on the throne, a year of tranquillity and kindly weather. The month of June blazed with sunshine, and the brothers got their hay in early. The elder trees were loaded with blossom, promising delicious wines for the year following and a good crop of berries to soothe coughs and colds in the autumn chills and mists. The summer continued fiercely hot and dry; the water in the well ran low and the grass withered brown and dusty, but September came with a mellow, lazy warmth, kindly mists in the mornings and long, slow, dreamy afternoons.

  Through the hot summer and on into the golden September days, the old brothers whose last days were spent in the peace of the infirmary were brought out to sit and doze among the herbs in the physic garden, and there they sunned themselves, lulled to drowsiness by the hum of the bees and the fragrance of the herbs, caressed by the almost imperceptible breeze.

  Abbot Peregrine had ruled his flock at St Alcuin’s Abbey for twelve years now, and the brothers loved him for his gentleness, humour and wisdom, and respected him for the courage and strength that lay beneath. He was in his fifty-seventh year now. The remains of his crisp, black curls were grey. All traces of youth’s softness had gone now from his face, which left it more hawk-like and eager than ever. Age had done nothing, however, to dim his disconcerting grey eyes—they had lost none of their directness and urgent power.

  Brother Cormac, Brother Theodore and Brother Thaddeus were all fully fledged, dignified monks now, and Gerard Plumley had become Brother Bernard, which Brother Tom said was a radical improvement. Tom himself was these days employed as the abbot’s personal attendant. He helped Peregrine with the impossibilities of shaving and fastening his sandals and his belt, and he cleaned the abbot’s house. He also waited at table for Peregrine when visitors came to the abbey, to cut his food and serve his guests with food and wine. Father Peregrine’s maimed hands could not perform either of these tasks with any reliable outcome, and it was in any case the customary thing in those days for the abbot of a monastery to have at least one or two personal servants.

  Brother Tom had been fully professed almost eight years now. He was just approaching his thirtieth birthday, the end of his tenth year in the community, but he was still not master of his irrepressible nature, and could be as undisciplined as a schoolboy in the company of Brother Francis, whose composed and urbane exterior hid a spirit as mischievous as Tom’s own.

  There was a new generation of novices—Brother Richard, Brother Damian, Brother Josephus, and Brother James, who had just had his clothing ceremony and was bursting with delight at being allowed to wear the habit of the order. The novitiate was still watched over by Father Matthew’s stern and exacting authority, though he was feeling his age now.

  In the kitchens, Brother Andrew still ruled, with the help of Brother Cormac and young Brother Damian. Brother Michael had gone to work with Brother John in the infirmary, where his thoughtfulness and gentleness did excellent service. Although Brother Edward was more than eighty years old now, and as light and wrinkled as a withered leaf, he was still officially the infirmarian. His heart and wind were still as sound as a bell, and his mind still sharp and clear, but his sight and hearing were growing dim, and he relied more and more on Brother John and Brother Michael in the infirmary work. In the afternoons he was allowed to drowse in the sun in the herb gardens outside the infirmary in the company of the other old men, of whom he was no longer the youngest.

  On this particular day, Brother Edward was sitting with Brother Cyprian to keep an eye on him lest his usual peaceful docility should erupt into one of his occasional, unpredictable fits of eccentric behaviour. Brother Cyprian had for years been the porter of the abbey—a wise, discreet and kindly man, whose job had given him a wealth of insight into human nature—but he was very old now, toothless and senile and incontinent. Brother Martin had replaced him as porter, and Brother Cyprian now dreamed and wandered and slept, propped with pillows in his chair, his veined and freckled old hands resting on the woollen rug that Brother Michael had carefully tucked around him. The experience of a lifetime was not all lost, however, and from time to time he would interrupt his vacant staring and the rhythmic chewing of his gums, to narrow his eyes thoughtfully and utter with typical Yorkshire bluntness a surprisingly shrewd and observant comment about his brothers in the monastic life.

  Father Peregrine had been to the infirmary for Brother John to exercise and massage his stiff, misshapen hands, and he stopped in the garden to talk to the old brothers, telling Brother Edward news he had just received of his daughter Melissa.

  ‘Edward, she has another child, a baby boy. She says both she and the infant are thriving.’

  Melissa had been married eight years to her wool merchant, Ranulf Langton, and they had recently moved to Yorkshire, where the fleeces of the abbeys’ flocks were renowned throughout Europe. Ranulf’s business was prospering, they were comfortably and hap
pily settled, and Melissa had just sent word to Father Peregrine of the birth of her fourth child, a boy, Benedict.

  Peregrine glowed with pride as he spoke of her, and Brother Edward nodded and smiled obligingly as he heard the details of her letter lovingly recounted. They neither of them noticed Brother Cyprian’s unfocused gaze sharpen until he was looking with close attention at Peregrine’s face, disfigured and scarred but somehow beautiful with the joy of his love as he told Edward his happy news.

  ‘I don’t know what ‘appened to thee,’ interrupted Brother Cyprian suddenly, his red-rimmed old eyes looking acutely at Peregrine, taking in his scarred face and hands and the crutch he leaned on. ‘Knocked all about by t’ look o’ thee. Eh, but tha was an aggravating, strutting peacock when tha came! Aye, smile! Go on, laugh if tha will, but ‘tis true! Tha thought thyself a king on thy throne. Knocked thee off, did they? Aye, well, never mind, lad. Learned thee a bit o’ sense, I can see that.’

  He blinked the reptilian lids of his hooded old eyes and chuckled to himself. Father Peregrine stood looking at him, startled, amused and not sure how to respond, but the old man had retreated into his own world, chewing and gazing. Presently he slipped into a doze, and his mouth fell ajar as the toothless jaw slackened.

  ‘Father—’ Young Brother James’ voice at his elbow claimed Peregrine’s attention. ‘There is a party of folk asking hospitality for the night whom Brother Martin thinks you would maybe wish to greet.’

  Father Peregrine turned away from Brother Cyprian, still smiling.

  ‘Did he give you a name?’

  ‘Yes, Father, he bids me tell you it is Sir Geoffrey and Lady Agnes d’Ebassier.’

  A shadow of weariness clouded Father Peregrine’s face. The names were those of a wealthy Norman baron and his wife, landowners from just south of Yorkshire. They stayed from time to time at St Alcuin’s to break the journey to Scotland, where Lady Agnes’ brother-in-law owned some excellent hunting and fishing territory. Sir Geoffrey and his lady were deeply pious, good people, generous benefactors whose gifts were more than helpful to the finances of the abbey, but they were not easy guests. They liked to think of St Alcuin’s as home from home and felt entitled to drop in unannounced at any time as their gifts of money to the brothers were so frequent and so large. This could be awkward at times, and besides this their keen consciousness of their own social standing and the rigid formality of their manners imposed a strain even on themselves. Father Peregrine found it exhausting. He looked at Brother James, the joy of his letter and his amusement at Brother Cyprian had suddenly evaporated. He felt the first tightenings of his shoulders and neck that would develop inevitably into a thundering headache as the evening drew on.