The Hawk and the Dove Read online

  Mrs Crabtree gave joyful tongue behind me. Did God mind that dreadful singing, he who made the nightingale and the lark? Probably not. Probably it was the soul of Mrs Crabtree he was listening to, the worshipping song of her heart, and that rang true as a bell.

  Then it was over, and we went out into the cool of the evening. Father Carnforth smiled kindly at me, and shook my hand in his aged hand, the joints swollen with arthritis and the skin wrinkled and discoloured with the years. His nose was big and red, with dark whiskers growing from it, and he was almost completely bald. He smelt strongly of pipe tobacco, and his cassock was not quite clean, but even Cecily loved him, and she had strong opinions about most people. His friendship with Cecily was helped along by the bag of peppermints he carried in his pocket, but it was not entirely that. He called her his sugar-plum fairy. Mary, who was always very worried about people she loved growing old and dying, focused her anxiety on him, as the most ancient person of her acquaintance.

  Father Carnforth looked at me with his watery old eyes. They were brown, and small, and twinkling. Hedgehog’s eyes. Like Mother’s, they looked into the middle of you and could make you feel uncomfortable at times.

  ‘Ah, Melissa, you do me good, you’re a breath of springtime,’ he wheezed at me. ‘Tell your little Mary that Father Carnforth is still clinging to this world and sends his love.’

  He shook Mother’s hand: ‘Goodnight, my dear. Take care.’

  Mother and I walked slowly down the pathway, breathing in the scent of the roses that grew in a hedge around the churchyard.

  ‘I often think how odd it is,’ she mused, ‘that Lilian Shepherd is tall and graceful, with hair like spun gold and a face like a Greek goddess, while Father Carnforth is old and bald and fat and wrinkled; but it is Father Carnforth who is beautiful, not Lilian.’

  ‘It’s you that’s odd, Mother!’ I replied as I took her arm, ‘and beautiful. Will you tell me that story on the way home? The one you were going to tell me.’

  ‘Melissa, your appetite for stories is almost as prodigious as Cecily’s appetite for sweets! I will tell you the story on one condition, and that is that you pester me for no more stories today.’

  I promised happily. Mother picked a white dead-nettle from the side of the path and pulled off one of its creamy flowers. ‘Did you know,’ she said, ‘that if you suck at the base of the flower, you get a drop of nectar from it—that’s unless the bees have been before you, of course. Try it and see.’ She showed me how to suck out the nectar, and gave me the nettle stem. I tried one of the flowers, and was astonished by the sweet, light, delicious flavour of the nectar.

  ‘Now you know what bees eat,’ said Mother, and while I worked my way through the rest of the flowers on the stem, we walked slowly out of the churchyard, and started homewards up the hill.

  ‘It was a time when Father Peregrine was tired, and very sad,’ began Mother. ‘Just a minute. I’ve got a stone in my shoe.’ She held on to my shoulder while she took it off and shook out the stone, then we walked on again.

  It was only three days after Melissa had gone back home with Hugh and Edwin, and Father Peregrine had been plunged into a valley of despair: grief, temptation and sorrow. Every night during the week she had stayed with them he had kept watch and prayed for her before the altar in the chapel; and during the days he had put aside everything but the daily round of prayer to look after her, snatching an hour’s sleep here and there, fasting the greater part of each day.

  On the day she left, a cloth merchant and his wife who were travelling past came seeking hospitality at the abbey. Peregrine had to entertain them at lunch and supper, disciplining himself to chat about trivial matters and show an interest in the ups and downs of the cloth trade. Also, the rent re-assessment and lease renewal for the farm tenancies belonging to the abbey must be made by Lady Day, so Peregrine had spent two arduous days in conference about the rents with Brother Ambrose, the cellarer, who looked after the finances of the abbey as well as the distribution of clothing, bed linen and other necessities. They had also discussed the provision of hospitality for the pilgrims and visitors who would be guests of the abbey during the Easter Feast.

  After all this, he felt weary and numb, drained now of emotion. The old wounds in his leg were aching badly, since to keep himself awake as he prayed through the long nights he had forced the unyielding knee to kneel. So his back also was tense and aching, and he had a persistent, nagging headache just to round everything off. In the end, Brother Edward insisted that he come to the infirmary and submit to having his back and leg rubbed with oils of lavender, bergamot and geranium.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped Peregrine. ‘I’m a monk, not a lady of the court. Save your aromatics for the sick, Edward.’

  ‘I won’t have to save them long if you carry on like this,’ insisted Brother Edward stoutly. ‘It’s you who will be ill if you don’t heed my advice. This week long you’ve not had those hands of yours attended to. Prayer and fasting are all very well, but you’re not adding common sense to the recipe. You can’t possibly undertake your responsibility to this community when you’re half dead with fatigue and aching from head to foot!’

  ‘How do you know I ache?’ mumbled Peregrine grudgingly.

  ‘Because I have eyes in my head and wits to understand what I see. Now, Father, you hear sense, and come to me in the infirmary.’

  Peregrine would say no more, so Brother Edward left him, muttering crossly about his stubbornness. By the afternoon, however, Father Peregrine felt ill enough to give in. He made his way slowly down the cobbled path that bordered the kitchen gardens. A few gilly-flowers grew there, perfuming the air with their intoxicating scent, and among the cobbles, little heart sease plants grew, and a few violets still. He leaned heavily on his crutch, and his lame leg felt like a lead weight. In the kitchen garden, the young vegetable plants were in, and Brother Tom was hoeing the immaculate beds. He watched Father Peregrine toiling down the path, look ing as though he could hardly drag himself along.

  Peregrine said afterwards that it was his own fault, that he should have been paying attention to what he was doing. A loose cobble turned under the crutch as he leaned on it, and it shot awkwardly to the side, tripping him so that he fell on his face on the ground.

  Brother Tom saw him fall, dropped his hoe and ran to help. With his support, Peregrine got slowly to his feet, and Tom restored his crutch to him so he could stand. His nose was bleeding and the left side of his face grazed badly. He said nothing, but stood there, dazed. He blinked, and sighed. He took Tom’s proffered handkerchief (which was none too clean) with stiff difficulty into his hand, and clamped it to his bleeding nose.

  ‘Come, Father,’ said Tom, ‘I’ll help you. Come into the infirmary and sit down.’ He took Peregrine’s free arm, and half led him, half supported him, to the infirmary. The door stood open and, just within, a doorway to the right led off the passageway into a room where a bench was placed near the door. Peregrine slumped onto it without speaking, his lame leg stretched in front of him, looking blackly out at the world over the grubby handkerchief Tom had given him.

  It occurred to Tom that he looked remarkably like a moulting falcon; dishevelled and out of sorts, and with that same fierce, brooding look in his eye. Half sorry for him and half amused in spite of himself, Tom hovered beside him a moment, wondering whether to go in search of Brother Edward.

  As he stood hesitating, one of the lay servants, Martin Jonson, a cheerful, good-hearted young man from the village, bustled into the room from the doorway on the other side. His arms were so full of clean linen for the infirmary beds that he could scarcely see over the top of the pile, on which rested his chin. He saw Peregrine, however, and came to a halt in front of him.

  ‘Dear, dear, dear; what have we here, Father?’ he asked jovially, using the same jolly and encouraging tone with which he was used to addressing the senile and ailing inhabitants of the infirmary. ‘Whatever have you been and gone and done to your
self?’

  Father Peregrine regarded him coldly over the top of the gory handkerchief. ‘I fell od the stodes add gave byself a dose-bleed,’ he said with icy dignity.

  ‘Don’t worry, Father, we’ll put you back together in no time!’ responded Martin cheerfully, and moved purposefully towards the doorway. ‘I’ll go and find Brother Edward for you, Father,’ he said, but he never made it to the door. Peregrine’s face was visible to him, but not his feet, and not noticing the stiff, lame leg that stuck out across his pathway, he tripped over it and fell among an avalanche of bedding.

  Peregrine gave an involuntary yell of pain as the man’s weight hit his leg, and then, his teeth gritted and his eyes screwed shut, he swore. Brother Tom’s eyes widened at the string of inventive oaths that streamed from his abbot’s lips. He was astonished (and delighted) to hear the words he himself used in moments of weakness in the mouth of his superior, normally so courteously and quietly spoken.

  Great-uncle Edward, who had come hurrying to see what all the fuss was about, was not so delighted, and clicked his tongue disapprovingly. ‘For shame, Father,’ he said. ‘Martin, get off his leg, man, and pick this lot up. Brother Thomas, you might assist him rather than stand there gawping. Really, some of you lads are about as much use as two left feet! On second thoughts, fetch me a basin of water, when you can get through the doorway.’

  Tom helped Martin pick up his pile of washing, and went for the bowl of water.

  ‘I ask your pardon, Father,’ Martin said apologetically. ‘I trust you are not too badly hurt?’

  Peregrine looked at him with a sickly attempt at a smile, and shook his head.

  ‘For myself, I must say I was winded, but this here bed-linen broke my fall,’ continued Martin, slightly peeved that nobody seemed particularly concerned with his own well-being.

  ‘Thank you, Martin; just take the linen and put it away, there’s a good lad,’ said Edward patiently, and Martin departed, narrowly avoiding a collision with Tom in the corridor, as he returned bearing the basin of water.

  ‘Let me look at your leg first, Father,’ said Edward. ‘That was a hefty weight to go crashing down on it. How is it?’

  ‘It hurts,’ Peregrine almost shouted at him, then sighed, ‘Oh, I’b sorry Edward, but what a foolish questiod.’

  ‘Brother Thomas, take a cloth from the cupboard there and clean his face while I have a look at this leg. Yes, that is a magnificent bruise, my friend. It will be all the colours of the sunset in a day or two, but no real harm done. You’ll do.’

  Tom removed the blood-soaked handkerchief, and gently washed Peregrine’s face in the cool water. ‘Keep your head back, Father. Your nose still bleeds slightly. Yes, that goes better.’

  ‘What are you gridding at?’ asked Peregrine, looking out of ferocious dark eyes at Tom’s face bent over him.

  ‘You!’ said Tom, laughing, as he carefully washed the grit from the graze on Peregrine’s face. ‘You’ve just the same disagreeable look about you as a moulting falcon—“touch me not for I’d peck you!”’

  ‘Brother Thomas!’ exclaimed Edward. ‘How can you speak with such disrespect? Recollect whom you’re addressing and be a little less familiar in your speech, please! How did you come to do this, Father?’

  ‘I fell od—hag od a bidit, let be blow by dose.’ He fished in his pocket for his own handkerchief, and cautiously blew his nose. ‘That’s better. A loose cobble on the path by the vegetable gardens turned under my crutch, and I fell. Thank you, Brother Thomas, I feel more like a human being again. Moulting falcon indeed—I’ll wager you don’t speak with such impudence to Father Matthew… I was on my way, Brother Edward, to beg pardon for my rude refusal of your kindness, and ask if you will after all give my back and leg a rub with your oils. I feel like a wrecked ship.’

  They patched him up, put ointment on the graze on his face, and arnica on the wonderful bruises with which he and Martin between them had decorated his legs, and Edward massaged his hands and back and leg for him with his aromatic oils. Under the capable manipulation of Edward’s strong and practiced hands, Peregrine relaxed, and as the tension flowed out of him, he fell asleep. They left him to sleep all afternoon and evening, which is what he really needed.

  He was back in his stall in chapel for Compline and the night Office, and by the time Divine Office was concluded and it was time for community chapter, he was more himself again—albeit rather battered-looking—presiding over the meeting of the community with his accustomed attentiveness and authority.

  The chapter began as usual, with the confession by the novices of any faults they may have committed. At Father Matthew’s prompting, Brother Thaddeus came, embarrassed and self-conscious, to kneel before the community.

  ‘Brothers, I humbly confess my fault,’ he said, ‘I… stubbed my toe yesterday…’ he paused.

  ‘Hell’s teeth!’ muttered Brother Cormac to Brother Francis. ‘Is it an offence even to stub your toe now?’

  ‘… and I said… I said… I used a most vile oath,’ continued Thaddeus. ‘I ask God’s forgiveness and yours, brothers, for the offence.’

  It fell to the abbot, on these occasions, to pronounce God’s forgiveness, and Father Peregrine sat for a long moment, regarding Thaddeus as he knelt before them. Thaddeus began to sweat. Then Peregrine looked across at Father Matthew with a curious expression on his face. He sighed, picked up the crutch that lay on the floor beside him, and got slowly to his feet. He crossed over, before the puzzled eyes of the community (puzzled, that is, except for Brother Tom, who was grinning like an idiot, and Brother Edward), to where Brother Thaddeus knelt, looking up at his abbot apprehensively.

  ‘Stubbed your toe?’ he said, looking down at him. ‘I trust you are quite recovered.’

  ‘Yes thank you, Father,’ mumbled Thaddeus, wondering what on earth this was about. Leaning heavily on his shoulder, Peregrine bent with a grimace of pain to kneel beside him.

  ‘I humbly confess my fault,’ he said. ‘Brothers, I also was guilty of using some of the most depraved language yesterday; in the hearing, furthermore, of one of our lay servants and one of our novices. I ask your forgiveness, and God’s.’

  There followed a startled silence, which Father Peregrine broke by saying testily, ‘I believe in the circumstances, Father Chad, it falls to you to pronounce God’s forgiveness.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, yes. I—I’m sorry!’ stuttered Father Chad. ‘God forgives you, my brothers, and so do we.’

  Father Peregrine, leaning again on Thaddeus, rose painfully to his feet, and limped back to his place.

  The novices withdrew, as was customary, leaving the fully professed brothers to continue the community chapter.

  ‘He didn’t have to do that,’ said Brother Francis. ‘He could have waited until we’d gone.’

  ‘It was more honest, though,’ said Thaddeus, ‘and it was worth it just to see Father Matthew’s face! What did he say, anyway, Tom?’

  Tom shook his head and wagged a finger at them in mock reproval. ‘One man’s sin,’ he said, ‘is not an appropriate topic for another man’s conversation: and besides, it would make me blush to repeat it!’

  We turned the corner into our road, and the evening sun had transformed the window-panes of all the houses into sheets of gold.

  ‘That was the last time Father Matthew ever insisted that one of the novices confess to the whole community for swearing,’ finished Mother, with a smile. ‘Run on ahead, Melissa, love, and put the kettle on.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Ascending Lark

  Mary’s birthday was on September twenty-ninth, the feast of St Michael and all Angels. Last year her birthday had fallen on a Sunday, but that year, when she reached six, her birthday fell on a school day. It was a warm, clear morning, and Mary sat like a princess at the breakfast table, in a crown of marigolds Mother had made from those still flowering in the garden. She wore her best dress and her happiest smile as she looked at her little pile of presents that lay among
their tissue wrappings on the table in front of her.

  Mary’s smile (even now she is a grown woman it is still the same) has always been a smile of extraordinary loveliness, transforming her thin, serious face into something quite dazzling.

  There was not the money for large or expensive presents, but Therese and I had sewn her a doll with a pretty dress and bonnet. The fiddly bits were slightly grubby from the sweat of our concentration, and I had left a bloodstain from a pricked finger on the doll’s face, but Mary didn’t seem to notice. She loved it, and she loved the necklace that Mother had saved from her own childhood, and the blue cardigan Grandma had knitted to match Mary’s best dress. She loved everything. I can remember thinking, with a twinge of guilt at my cynicism, how easily pleased you are when you’re only six.

  Mary gave a huge sigh of contentment, and then turned her attention to the menu for tea. We were allowed to choose whatever we liked, within reason, for our birthday teas, and usually spent weeks beforehand deciding and planning and changing our minds—yes, even Therese and I, although we pretended to be so grown-up as to be above such things.

  Mary was quite sure what she wanted. She raised her small, determined chin, fixing her earnest grey eyes on Mother’s face. ‘I would like orang-outang pie,’ she said.

  Mother looked slightly at a loss.

  ‘What did you say, Mary?’ asked Therese.

  ‘Orang-outang pie,’ repeated Mary, her voice faltering a little as she read the bewilderment on our faces. ‘I would like orangoutang pie.’