Remember Me (10 page)

“Well, my brother,” said John softly, “I think you must go and say you're sorry. He's only a lad. He knows nothing of your grief. It isn't fair for him to feel the sharp end of your sorrow.”

William inclined his head in assent. “Can it wait until I've finished what I was doing? I'll go today, but not right now, if that's all right. I—if it makes things any better—for what it's worth—I'm not altogether insensible. I know I can be… well… this won't be the first time I've apologized to him.”

“Any time today,” Abbot John gave his permission.

Brother Cormac deftly chopped the herbs and green leaves for the salad. A handful of seeds and one of pine nuts went in, and he covered the bowls, fetched the oil, the vinegar, and the salt, and set them nearby to be added just before the food went to the tables.

“Where is Brother Conradus?”

Cormac glanced up briefly. He had not heard William's approach. “In the garden, watering the beans,” he replied, reaching for a towel to dry his hands. He looked again at William.
Faith! Man in a foul mood
, he thought, and wished he'd been a bit vaguer about Conradus's whereabouts.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

“No,” said William, and he left by the door to the yard.

He walked across the cobbles softened with casual wildflowers at this time of year. Small plants grew round the base of the well. He went through the gap in the hedge into the kitchen garden and saw there Brother Conradus, patiently ministering to the vigorous plants as they bloomed on their tall sticks, with his buckets and pitchers of well water. Turning from the vegetable bed to the path, the novice caught sight of William making his way toward him, and his appearance altered from cheerful contentment to frozen apprehension. He found all the professed brothers inherently awe inspiring to the level of alarm: this one was worse than that. He felt suddenly frightened in case Abbot John had said something that might have made Father William angry with him. He stood on the path awaiting his doom as William walked down toward him.

William stopped in front of him and looked at the ground for a moment. His expression Conradus read as exasperated and irritable. Conradus wondered which thing he might have done had offended him this time.

William was in fact searching without success for some friendly pleasantry to set the novice at his ease. But his mind was empty. He was simply enduring this.

So without any niceties in advance, he knelt on the path before the young man.

“I have spoken to you ungratefully and unkindly,” he said. “‘Surly' was the word Father Abbot used, and that was accurate. I humbly beg your pardon, my brother. Please forgive me. Again. Please forgive me for doing no better than before. You are teaching me that my habits are selfish and ungracious. Thank you for that, but I beg your pardon. Of your charity, forgive me.”

“
God
,” thought Conradus.
He didn't say “God”. You're supposed to say, “I ask God's forgiveness and yours, my brother.” So, do I say God forgives him too, or is it just me that's meant to forgive him? Why doesn't he ever do this according to the rules
?

William remained kneeling before him, his head bent. Looking down on the nape of his neck, Conradus was seized by an unexpectedly overwhelming wave of compassion. The nape of a man's neck looks so vulnerable, so defenceless. He had an idea that William didn't give a stuff about the tradition and probably thought his relationship with God was something to be fixed privately, but his contrition was not just a hollow shell of words; Conradus could see that. In the course of his childhood he had often enough witnessed how one of his brothers or sisters, forced by their mother to offer an apology, could fill the gentle words with contempt or even use them to convey a threat. This, he recognized, was something different. William meant what he said.

Before he could think what reply to frame, seeing that William had not asked the right question, Conradus was further startled by his looking up into his eyes. Brother Conradus himself never raised his face to look at the brother whose forgiveness he was required to seek. The experience felt penetrating enough already; it didn't need intensifying. And he had never seen anybody else do it either. Father Theodore hadn't said, but Conradus thought you were probably supposed to keep your head bent, for humility. He was beginning to feel out of his depth with this brother.

“Please,” William said, and there was such a world of weariness and sadness in his face.

Brother Conradus thought since this professed brother had made up something and not used the proper form of words, then it might come across as more sincere and less of a formality if he did the same. So, “It's all right,” he said. “God forgave you every time as soon as you said it, and I forgave you on average about three hours later. Be at peace; it's done with. It was my fault really. I hadn't grasped that you don't like sweetmeats. I won't pester you again.”

And that seemed to be enough. William got to his feet. “Thank you,” he said, and again Conradus thought he sounded as though he meant it, and yet his voice was dull, as though he could hardly bring himself to think anything.

“Brother,” said Conradus in a rush of bravery, knowing he should have said “Father” and that it was probably something William would regard as none of his business anyway, and deciding not to care, “
Whatever
is it? You look as if something's completely crushing you.”

“Crushing?” Something that Conradus assumed was intended as a smile crossed William's face. “You mean I don't look completely crushed yet? Well, that's an encouragement. Thank you for your charity, brother, and your patience. Maybe I should make a time to see you once a week before Mass and get all my apologies out of the way in one go. Thank you. You have a gentle spirit.”

And with a sketchy suggestion of a respectful bow, he turned on his heel and went back up the path the way he had come.

“I'm sorry, brother,” said Cormac who was waiting for Brother Conradus when he returned the pitchers to the scullery. “I didn't think quick enough to avoid that one.”

“No—it was all right,” the novice responded. “He wasn't angry. He wanted to say sorry for being rude to me again. But he seems so—do
you
know what's the matter with him, Brother Cormac?”

“Probably,” said Cormac, “if I think about it. But it might be better not to, so I don't.”

He reached past Brother Conradus for a large cooking pot hanging on a nail in the wall. “I'll boil some eggs,” he said firmly, and Conradus realized he would have to be content with that enigmatically unsatisfying reply.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

September

Madeleine stepped through the open door into the checker this mellow September morning, the scent of autumn carried on the light breeze, the earth lazy in the golden warmth of the day.

“God give you good day, Brother Ambrose!” she greeted him pleasantly. “How goes the work? Are we solvent? Are we walking in hope? Are we in profit?”

He looked up and smiled at her. “Good morrow, Mistress Hazell! I think I can say we are striding confidently—all our debts are paid, and we have enough in store for the unexpected; all repairs are done and accounts up to date. It's a marvel—but 'tisn't I. We have to thank Father William; the work he's put in takes my breath away. I never thought I'd see the day when we had everything in such exemplary order.”

“Oh,” said Madeleine, “he's got more to him than a pretty face and a charming manner then?”

Brother Ambrose chuckled, mightily amused by the suggestion that William could be considered as having either. “What can I do for you, Mistress Hazell, this fine day?”

“Well, with your permission, Brother Ambrose, it's not your time I came to waste but Father William's. Only for a moment. I've a message for him from Mother Cottingham.”

“Surely—there he is in his corner, hard at work as we like him to be.”

With a smile of thanks, Madeleine turned to William. She knew exactly where he was. She knew where he sat—and how he sat, and the look on his face when he was thinking or puzzling over some complication in his correspondence. She could feel him in all her body, even before she turned to look at him. She knew what he would be doing—calmly continuing apparently to address himself to the matters he had in hand until the moment she turned. And as she did so, he would raise his face to her with a carefully composed expression of polite inquiry that did not quite match the intensity in his eyes. And this he did.

“Madeleine,” he said, “I am all yours.”

She saw the amusement on his face at her sudden look of alarm before she registered that Brother Ambrose would take this for the harmless pleasantry it was not. She felt annoyed with herself (and with him) that the unexpected words left her slightly flustered—actually physically took her breath away—and that he saw. She felt very grateful in that moment to have her back to Brother Ambrose, the expression on her face obscured from his view.

“God give you good day, Father William,” she said—and could think of no double entendre to match his, though for a few seconds she did frantically try. “Two things. The first is, yesterday I was in the infirmary taking them some good physic herbs from my garden, and Brother Michael said could I slip into the conversation in passing if I saw you that Father Oswald feels a little hurt (Brother Michael thinks) that you have not been to spend time with him in a while. Though why Brother Michael expects I am more likely to run into you than he is, I cannot imagine.”

William nodded. He read the warning in her words and in her eyes, telling him that the bond between them had not gone unnoticed among the brothers. “Thank you. I understand. Yes, I'll go to see Oswald. He seems to be doing well; I have been somewhat preoccupied—had things on my mind—and thought I would not be much company for him. The other thing? Mother Cottingham?”

“She said—I am telling you exactly what she said—that she wanted to talk to you about sin.”

“Really? Well, that's always a pleasure. I'll go over and see her this afternoon.”

“She hasn't been too well this last week. She has a head cold, and it's gone to her chest a bit. But she wraps up warm and sits out in the afternoon sunshine when the wind doesn't blow, and I am taking good care of her. I'm going to beg some broth from Brother Cormac to make her a chicken soup—none of my hens have been broody yet; I've bred no pot fowls.”

William leaned back in his chair as she talked, his face hidden from Brother Ambrose's line of vision by Madeleine standing there, his eyes frankly adoring her. Her words trailed away, disconcerted from her attempts to sound normal by the ardour that enfolded her like an embrace even as she stood in the middle of the room. She felt cherished, she felt wooed, she felt as though she'd been kissed.

“Well, that's all,” she said.

“As soon as ever I can, if I can find a way to get free of all this,” he replied softly, the yearning of his heart in his voice.

“Good Lord, brother, go easy on yourself!” Brother Ambrose laughed. “You work too hard! We can spare you for an hour to see poor old Mother Cottingham—think of it as an investment; the dear soul is good enough to us!”

“Ah—thanks, Ambrose; yes, that's the way to look at it. I'll be over to see her later today. Madeleine, thank you so much for stopping by.”

Nothing in his words emphasized that last sentence, only the look in his eyes.

“She will wait for you until you can come to her, whenever that may be,” Madeleine said, her eyes and her tone having the same incongruence as his, and inclining her head in courteous farewell, she turned away.

“Don't work too hard, Brother Ambrose!” she said airily. “Why keep a dog and bark yourself ?” And that gave her a reason for one last glance back at William, to take and store the smile she brought to his face, in her heart.

William watched her leave, his eyes following her until she had gone through the door and turned the corner out of his sight.

“A pleasant woman,” Brother Ambrose remarked. William looked at him, considering his words, his face betraying nothing.

“Yes,” he said, “and it's a blessing to our kitchen to have the occasional pail of surplus milk from her goat.”

He reached across the table for the wax and seal, to close the letters their abbot had already approved and signed and stamped.

When they rose from their work for the midday office and meal, Brother Ambrose commented on the beauty of the day; it seemed to make things go more cheerily, he thought—there had been a good atmosphere that morning in the checker.

When they had eaten, William made his way across to the abbey close, where he found Mother Cottingham's door ajar. He knocked, and a wheezy voice from within bade him enter.