A Day and a Life Read online

  “Christopher’s a good name, Colin; one to think on your whole life long. It’s about the connection between freedom, simplicity, and responsibility. It’s about knowing what you’re getting into, and being willing to keep going. Because there will be moments – trust me – when you can only mutter, ‘Hold tight, Jesus! Both hands, for God’s sake’; and do your best not to lose your footing. I should think it’s a name a man could feel honoured to bear; and it’s yours if you want it.”

  So of course he said yes, though he had to admit it felt daunting.

  This morning, when the novice master comes up to join them in the teaching circle at the end of Chapter, Colin catches the sadness and concern in Father Theodore’s face before he takes his place among them with his usual smile. This comes as something of a sudden revelation. Until this moment, Colin has always thought of a smile as something that just happens to your face because you feel happy. But it dawns on him today, when the novice master’s face a moment before makes it all too clear he is not happy, that a smile – like a friendly word – is a jewel of grace in community. It is the gift of loving kindness, from a man willing to turn away from himself and his own preoccupations, to think about how someone else might be feeling.

  It’s while Colin is still digesting this insight that Brother Robert pipes up: “Father Theodore? Where’s Brother Cedd?”

  This has been a matter of discussion among them while they were waiting for their novice master to come up from Chapter. It turns out none of them has seen him this morning. They decide he must be ill, gone to seek out Brother Michael in the infirmary.

  When Theo steadily meets Brother Robert’s gaze, and says quietly, seriously, “I don’t know”, they understand. And it sends a shaft of loss right into the heart of them. Brother Cedd. Studious, though not especially scholarly. Humble and gentle. Exceptionally gifted as a scribe. Rarely the centre of any conversation, not the life and soul of the party, the thought of losing him from their company surprises them by the sense of bereavement it brings.

  They know they are not supposed to ask questions; this has been explained to them before. Here, they have been told, we cling to nothing. We belong to one another in Christ alone. A man may come and he may go – but all life is a matter of changing and losing. Nothing lasts forever. Let the shock of passing act as a reminder to set your hope upon eternal things. Let it not disturb your peace.

  When the novice master turns his gaze upon him, Colin realizes his mouth has dropped open in sheer surprise at the news. He shuts it hurriedly, and again Theodore smiles.

  “Colin,” he says, “will you go along to the robing room? Father James says he has your robes ready to try.”

  Colin is not a lad of massive intellect, but even he doesn’t fail to notice how the sudden frisson of excitement he feels, sparked off by these words, tosses aside as if it were of no consequence at all his shock and sorrow of the moment before.

  He stands up to go. “Yes, Father,” he murmurs. As he leaves them to whatever they will be studying this morning, he knows he has caught a glimpse of what Father Theodore is always impressing upon them. They are not to be indifferent, or try to suppress individual temperament – in any case, that would be impossible. Their hearts are flesh and blood, not made of stone. But they must learn to hold steady, passing through the turbulence of life. They must learn not to drop the precious charge of what they have been called to carry, when they must wade through wild waves – whether of accomplishment and success or shame and grief. One minute there will be the cold shock of hearing someone has left them; the next will bring exultant joy for a set of robes. Praise, blame, the regard of others, material prosperity, comfort, health – these can be swept away in a moment; they are ephemera. They must learn to prefer the lasting things, and the things that will make them strong – patience and kindness, faithfulness and humility; the presence of Christ in their midst. They must learn to discern him; sometimes he is there unrecognized, as they will see.

  He supposes that this effervescence of excitement, that at last he will be clothed in the habit of the order, cannot be categorized as one of those properties of eternal life he is meant to espouse. Nonetheless, he feels almost giddy with happiness as he knocks on the robing room door. As Father James opens it and invites him in with a welcoming grin, it occurs to Colin to wonder – Brother Cedd – wherever he is – is he still wearing his Benedictine robes? Or has he ditched them?

  Chapter

  Five

  Colin stands with his arms held out straight from his sides, Father James making sure he’s got the sleeve length right, and a comfortable width across the shoulders.

  “You can put your arms down now.”

  He fetches the sturdy belt, and a scrip to hang on it. “Here’s your pocket. Keep your handkerchief in it, safe. You’ll be having to confess a sin against holy poverty, on your knees in Chapter before the abbot, if you lose that. Here’s your rosary. Loop it over – that’s right. I haven’t got any knives at the moment, but I’m sure Brother Cormac will have some in. I’ll make sure we have one for you in time for your ceremony.”

  He brings the scapular from the table, and lifts it over the young man’s head. The sides are tabbed together, but loosely, so Colin will be able to get his hands in and out, reach his hanky, his rosary, his knife. Father James steps back and inspects him critically, nods in satisfaction. “Good. Perfect length.”

  The cowl likewise sits on him well. Father James knows he mustn’t show off about his craftsmanship, and the young men he kits out in their robes rarely comment. They usually stand (like this one) almost overwhelmed by the privilege and wonder of reception into the monastic order; thinking about their vocation, not about his stitching. In fact, Father James can’t think of one single postulant whose first thought has been, “My word, Father James! Black linen thread on black wool, in all these short days and lowering weather, and you managed these wondrously straight lines of such amazingly tiny stitches? Man, you’re an artist of the first water!” Or his second thought, for that matter. But never mind. Our Lady Queen of Heaven is watching: offer it up, and what more can you ask?

  Father James ascertains that Colin knows what will be happening.

  “Father will receive you in Chapter – you’ll be tonsured first. Father John used to be our infirmarian, so he’s nifty with a razor, you’ll be fine. You’ll be wearing your regular tunic, but the chemise I’ve made you underneath that. No need to be as all-for-God as Francis of Assisi and strip to the buff. So then you lay aside your tunic and kneel before the abbot, and he dresses you in this lot that I’ve made. In silence. After that he gives you your new name. Has he said what that’s to be?”

  “Christopher.”

  Father James pulls an admiring face. “That’s nice. Swimmer?”

  He gestures towards the table, where a nondescript stack of black wool lies neatly folded. “That’s your other set. You’ll have two of everything. We do give you boots, but unless the ones you have are outlandish in some way – which I see they’re not – you can keep those that you’ve got now until you need new. Saves on cost.

  “Good. Right, then. Let’s have those things off you, and I’ll put them by ready. You know all the other bits that happen? You have to promise you aren’t married and you haven’t got any incurable disease – and there’s the blessing and censing of your robes, the presentation of the Rule and your promises and everything. Father Theodore been through it all with you? Not yet? Well, he will. It’s any day now, isn’t it? Thanks – don’t worry, I can fold it for you. Brother Christopher, eh? Good. That’ll sit well on you.”

  Colin feels vaguely out of his body as he drifts to the door, his mind expanded into the magnitude of what he is about to undertake. A lifetime of celibacy. What? Nothing to call his own, ever again. Swearing absolute fealty to the abbot – and Father John occasionally looks more than grim. But this… he doesn’t understand why something deeper than his viscera reaches out for it so ravenously. This – h
e has glimpsed it in the brethren – this way of faithfulness and self-control is like a mountain spring. Like sweet water bubbling up from mud and rocks, so peace and joy emerge from it. He – everything in him – wants this.

  With his hand on the latch, suddenly he remembers his manners and turns, blushing. “I’m so sorry,” he says humbly: “I forgot to say thank you. Not – I hope you know – not because I’m ungrateful. It’s overwhelming. Thank you, Father James – thank you so much.”

  And James is laughing at him, amused at the excitement and exaltation. “God bless you,” he says. “Welcome to the family. Ooh – could you drop this in to Father Theodore for me? Father Gilbert asked me would I bring it up to him after chapel this morning, but I forgot. And he asked, could you and Brother Cassian and Brother Boniface stay in choir after None, to go through some of the music for next week? He said he looked for Theo – er, Father Theodore – after Chapter to ask him, but he couldn’t see him.”

  Colin looks at him, and Father James says, “Is that all right?”

  “Oh, aye, indeed. Me and Brother Cassian and Brother Boniface. I’ll ask permission.” He thinks it better to keep to himself the thoughts passing through his head, trying to imagine being on such familiar terms with his quiet, serious novice master. Theo. It gives him a glimpse into a whole different web of relationships.

  Colin takes the Mass setting held out to him, and Father James, with a friendly grin, waves him goodbye.

  The robing room is only two doors along from the novitiate, but these work rooms are large – it’s quite a length of corridor. As he walks along clutching the book to his chest, Colin practises walking how Father Theodore showed him.

  “The trick of it is” – this is how the novice master put it – “to pick your feet up rather than put them down, if you see what I mean. Not splat-splat-splat like a flat-footed overweight alewife, and not striding along like a knight of the realm with your heels striking sparks from the flagstones. This is God’s earth and you’re walking softly on it. Your tread must become a humble touch; gentle. No swagger, no braggadocio. There should be a concentration of quietness and humility emanating from your presence like smoke from incense – and it shouldn’t be billowing out so intensely silent and self-mortifying that the fragrant clouds of it choke everyone to death, either. Just gentle. Just calm. Just at peace.”

  It sounds lovely. He tries this walk, and feels a bit self-conscious. He thinks he probably looks more like his feet have blisters. Father Theodore didn’t mean hobbling. Looking round to make sure no one is watching, he nips back to the robing room door and tries again. There is a plantedness, a sort of supple heaviness in the way the solemns7 walk. He strives to capture it, can’t, wonders if he ever will. Maybe you need to actually feel peaceful to achieve it. Or maybe achieving it is a way of walking towards the peace. He doesn’t know; but reaching the novitiate door for the second time, he thinks he’d better go in.

  He has been somewhat in awe of the novice master, but… Theo. Perhaps that day will come to him too. Somewhere far into the future, perhaps that’s what he will say. And what will they call him? Chris?

  Frumenty. Served by his mother’s hands, with roast pheasant and onions, plenty of herbs, it was pleasant enough. It made a change from bread and filled up a lad’s belly – very welcome.

  Then he had entered monastic life when Brother Andrew held the obedience of cook, and he made frumenty too. But he had different ideas about it. Onions, yes. Boiled. Herbs, to a certain extent. No salt, because it was expensive. Sometimes a bit runny, like porridge, sometimes a dollop that needed a whack from the server to shift it off the spoon into a man’s bowl.

  And then, Lord have mercy and deliver us, sixteen years with Brother Cormac’s cooking. Now, his rendition of frumenty was something else altogether. How does he do it, Brother Tom used sometimes to wonder; how does he contrive to make cracked wheat lumpy? The man has a sort of genius, headed in all the wrong directions. And herbs? Nothing out of a recipe, mind – any herbs. Anything fresh, anything dried, whatever he had in store. Dill and mint and a few cloves chucked in because the pepper had run out? Fennel seed and cumin seed and a good old branch of rosemary (because it grew aplenty) to ramp up the flavour? Salt? Maybe. Sometimes he cooked it in wine, sometimes in some broth he had left over. He’d even bung in a handful of fungi from the woods if the mood took him. No one but Cormac thought eating mushrooms could be any kind of a good idea; heaven knows, men have died from eating mushrooms. Besides which, if you don’t get them fresh they can be crawling with maggots.

  Father Peregrine was an inspired man for simplicity and following in the way of Jesus; and in no respect did he carry out his vision more radically and powerfully than appointing Brother Cormac as St Alcuin’s cook. Sixteen years. Glory be to God, that must have made us holy. If that hasn’t knocked every brother a decade off Purgatory, there can’t be anything would.

  But then… oh manna – a salvation of sorts; along came Brother Conradus. And when he makes frumenty, it’s a different story. Oh, sweet mother of God, Brother Conradus’s frumenty! It has honey, it has cinnamon, it has almonds, it has milk, it has cream – aye, and butter. It has nutmeg grated on it. It’s not slack and runny and bitty, it’s not solid and stodgy – it’s cooked to perfection… what’s that Latin word? Dolce. Describes Brother Conradus’s frumenty to a T.

  Every brother of the house has had need to let his belt out a notch or two since Abbot John let Brother Conradus loose in the abbey kitchen. And life is pleasanter, and the men are more cheerful. It’s nice having a supper you can look forward to, on a cold, wet day. It makes life better to know the butter won’t be rancid, and you won’t be having to ignore bits of blue mould on the bread.

  The only thing about it is possibly meal times can loom larger than they should. There are times, now, when the north-easter blows frigid off the moor, the days are dark and the nights bitter, when supper is actually the highlight of the day. Who could make a case for that being admirable religion? But what I wouldn’t give for a nice big dish of Brother Conradus’s frumenty in front of me now. I wonder if this mare is hungry? I wonder if there’s a difference from hay to hay? If some of it’s more like Brother Andrew’s suppers, and some of it (God save us) resembles Cormac’s? And if there’s some kinds of hay, all green and fragrant with herbs, a distillation of summer, that correspond to the wonders Conradus dishes up? Horses like grain. I wonder – suppose they were hungry – if they’d eat frumenty? At least just give it a try?

  All the while these ramblings drift and swirl through Brother Thomas’s mind, the sturdy grey keeps her leisurely pace, carrying him through the beautiful hills and dales of North Yorkshire, through the mellow, golden warmth of this September day.

  And at last – a bit saddle-stiff; he doesn’t have any call to ride out this far so often these days – Tom recognizes the long, narrow lane that runs like a riverbed between tall, graceful, over-arching trees, and describes a curve to the right; then there’s the silvered oak gate of Caldbeck Cottage. Right welcome sight, and none too soon. He can’t actually swing his leg back to dismount from this horse with two sacks of grain up behind him. He urges her close to the gate, and reaches down to flip over the heavy iron latch; then it pushes open easily.

  Within the barest minute, the cottage door opens and out comes the abbot’s brother-in-law, William de Bulmer; thirty years a monk, now a householder.

  “Well met!” he calls out in surprise. “I wasn’t expecting you! What’s brought you here? No trouble, I hope?” He laughs. “Oh, I see – you can’t get down; let me heft these off for you. Whoa! Steady, girl!”

  Brother Tom explains that for once no searing tragedy has befallen them – John simply wanted to be sure they had some grain in store and wouldn’t be worried about facing lean days in the winter.

  “Not that he doesn’t think you provident – don’t take me wrong. He thought you’d be well off for peas and eggs and cheese; just maybe having to pay these high
prices to get grain from the market.”

  “That’s thoughtful,” says William. “That’s kind. God reward you. Will you come round with me to the stable? If I give this lass a rub down, would you fetch her a pail of water from the well, yonder?”

  So they settle the mare comfortably with a drink and a net of hay, then stroll back to the house.

  “We…” William hesitates. “I expect I’d better tell you before we go in. We have something of yours.”

  Brother Tom looks baffled. “Something of mine? That’s clever work, seeing I don’t even have anything to call my own.”

  “Aye, well, I think you’ll call this your own.”

  Further puzzled by this cryptic reply, Brother Thomas follows William through the house door which opens directly into the big room where they eat and cook and work and read and relax. The room with the huge fireplace with its iron pot slung on chains over smouldering embers. With the comfortable, scrubbed oak table on which bread and cheese and ale and fruit (welcome sight) have been set out.

  And there, at the table, half-rising from his stool in dismay, aghast to be greeted with the unexpected sight of the abbot’s big, burly esquire, the tense form and blanching face of Brother Cedd.

  Chapter

  Six

  When Colin comes back from the robing room, he feels conspicuous in his layman’s garb; not so different, after all, from the tunics the novices are wearing – but the tonsures, the scapulars, the rosaries, the uniform black, all set them apart. He longs to be admitted to this exclusive communion, with its aura of dedication and holiness. It’s strange and lonely, the place of a postulant. He has expressed his desire to leave the world of ordinary folk going about their normal occupations to be part of this, so that severance has occurred in his will, in his expressed intent; but he is not yet one of them. And all the others are careful to call each other Brother Cassian, Brother Boniface, Brother Placidus, Brother Felix, Brother Robert – where he has to be just Colin. The day of his clothing can’t come soon enough.