Remember Me (19 page)

At the end of Mass, the novices reverenced the presence of Christ in the reserve Sacrament behind and above the altar, then waited their turn and followed the professed brothers out of the choir—more in file than procession, for though they followed their order precisely, it was done with no pomp or ceremony; the monks handled the holy routines of prayer as unaffectedly as a housewife carded wool and set it up on the spindle. Brother Robert stole a curious glance again at Father William as he left his stall. Pale and distant, that face bore no visible trace of emotion anymore. He just looked very, very tired.

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

November

It was needful to light a candle in the checker now when work commenced again after the office of None. Between Vespers and Compline only the moon and the stars lit the velvet sky. Abbot John made his way with care across the abbey court this November night, for it was very hard to see anything at all. Inside the little building, William reached up his hand to shield the candle flame as he heard the latch click; the day had been blustery, and the draft from the door would blow out the light.

“Brother, what are you doing here?”

John closed the door behind him, and William let his hand drop to the table again.

“You should not be working at this hour—especially not on concerns like these. You need a fresh mind for accounts. And it's too cold in here.”

William looked up at him. The kindness in John's face twisted like a knife in his belly, unbearable. Sometimes, just because he loved him, he wanted to tell him everything, tell him he had no vocation now if he ever had one at all, tell him he wanted Madeleine more than anything and that love suffered and festered in his viscera, wearing him away day after day, like a shackled prisoner covered with sores hidden out of sight in the darkness of the dungeon under the house. He wanted to tell him it didn't matter how late he worked or what occupied his time; it was all the same.

“I'm all but done,” he said. “The last of the Michaelmas rents are in, and Ambrose has left the chits out for me to enter the details. Not everything tallies—as usual—and if I have to chase up any underpayments and pleas of hard times, it has a better chance of success if I do it sooner and don't wait until they've relaxed in the delusion that I won't have noticed, spending all their money meanwhile on more attractive options than paying rent. There'll be monies to find for grain; I was sick at heart to see so much lying smashed down in the fields when we had those sudden rainstorms early on. It still comes before my mind's eye when I think about it. And I was mortified that we hadn't the spices to embalm Oswald. His family would have preferred to be present when we buried him. Still, on the bright side, when I explained why we buried him so quickly, they sent a handsome gift—which was generous because he refused to send any kind of word to them to let them know where he was; didn't want them to see him mutilated. I wrote and told them all that had happened, and I think they were a bit shocked that they'd thought he'd died but he'd been alive all this time, but they only found out he was alive from me writing to say he was dead. They were grateful, though, that we'd taken care of him. I'll show you the letter. Sorry, I should have brought it to you before; it just slipped my mind. So anyway, some money in from them, thank the Lord. Oh—and the lace—I got back the price of the lace, amazingly.”

His abbot listened to all this, taking in what was being said to him, and quietly watching and assessing while he listened.

“Are you quite well?” he asked when William finished speaking. William blinked in surprise. “Why? Am I not making sense?”

“Perfect sense. But you're worn to a wraith. There was never that much of you, but you're a bundle of bones now. Your face looks hard and drawn and lined—kind of desperate. You've aged. You have a grim, dusty look about you; the whole light about you is grey. Your eyes are red, and that's the only colour left in you.”

“Try the soles of my feet,” responded William, “you'll find they're a lurid shade of yellow. But I'm pleased to hear I am so easy on the eye.”

Even as he offered this banter in reply, he could feel his belly tightening in panic. What if by some unimaginable miracle he found a way to offer himself to Madeleine, and she saw a haggard old man at her door for whom she felt nothing but pity?

“You were never easy on the eye.” John took up his jest. “But you haven't always looked as frankly terrifying as you do now. Are you eating properly, William? Are you sleeping well? I expect the truth, mind!”

William groped for some quip to turn aside the unwelcome exposure these questions threatened, but he could think of none. He shook his head. “Not really,” he muttered.

John frowned, and William felt extremely uncomfortable under the thoughtful probing of his gaze. At least John's putting a distance between himself and William had kept William safe from the perspicacity of those kind, brown eyes. William wished they were not considering him so very carefully now.

“Is it that you are troubled about the money, or is it still Madeleine—or both?”

William averted his face, his lips compressing into a tight line. He didn't want this conversation.

“I see,” said his abbot. “Both, then. Is there anything you should be telling me?”

Then William met his gaze, and despair flashed like anger in his face. “I am doing my best, all right? I am doing my best with everything! I pray and I work and I struggle! I'm trying as hard as I can, and it may not be good enough, but what more can I do?”

“Eat,” said John, “and rest. I'll ask Michael to sort out some herbs to help you. No—don't just dismiss it like that. You will break your health permanently if you go much further down this path. You eat your supper and take your ease by the fire in the warming room in the evening, and I'll ask Michael for some doses that will send you to sleep at night. And if you will not cooperate with this, shall I tell you what I will do? I'll have you out of here for a month in the infirmary and leave the accounts to Brother Ambrose, and I'll give you into the special charge of Brother Conradus to be fattened up. You think I'm jesting, don't you? Well, I'm not. Leave this now. It's an account, not a boiling pot of stew or a sheep with an obstructed labour. It won't have altered between now and tomorrow morning. I will sit down here and wait just while you pack that lot away, and then I want you out of here. And you're coming across with me to the infirmary for some sleep herbs.”

William continued to look at him.

“The warming room?” he said. “Did you mean that?”

“I did. Is that—that's a comfortable, friendly place to be—is that difficult?”

He saw the horror around William's mouth. “You would rather avoid the warming room?” John asked. “Is it haunted?”

It was a clumsy, feeble jest and found no answering gleam of humour.

“I cannot bear the idea,” William answered him simply. “I never go in there—well, only occasionally to check the fire irons and make sure the benches and tables have no worm and all the joints are good.”

“You don't like the idea of relaxing with your brothers in community?”

“
Relaxing?
God in heaven! I am here on sufferance, John! I was despised when I came, I have caused nothing but trouble, I have all but destroyed the whole future of the common life—oh, face it my brother—they do not love me.”

It was a confession not lightly made. John looked at the worn-out face and hollow eyes that regarded him with such tired resignation. He knew he had to bring some healing here, but he had to tread carefully. William would detect any half-truths and prevarication with effortless ease.

“I don't see,” he said finally, “how anybody could really know you and not love you. Part of building your future in this community is allowing the brothers to get to know you. That's all it would take for them to love you.”

William felt the welcome touch of kindness on the soreness of his soul. But John's words also brought home to him that he did not want to build his future in this community. He had to be here, that was true. But the thought of consciously shaping and working for a future that severed him from Madeleine and cauterized the wound of separation opened a dizzying glimpse into a holocaust of despair.

Puzzled, John watched the parade of ghosts and shadows that crossed his friend's face. He wanted to reassure him, release him from the obligation he had laid on him. But instead he said, “Not every evening. But three times a week anyway. You have allowed yourself to be too much alone. This is a community, my brother, and you are part of it.”

William nodded, and the look of misery intensified. “I know,” he said.

“Well, come now; you should not still be working at this hour—I want to set you up with some medicine in the infirmary before we go into silence. These things will still be here in the morning.”

John wished he had brought a lantern as they went out into the blowing dark. A fitful rain fell in a fine wind-flung spume, and the damp night felt raw and discouraging. William hunched his thin shoulders against the dismal weather as he felt for the keyhole, inserted the big iron key, and locked the door of the checker. He had given up returning the key to Brother Ambrose—he always got there before him and worked until Compline every night, obsessively examining accounts and calculating possibilities.

The wind flapped and snatched at their habits as they crossed the court and dived into the cloister buildings for a moment's relief from the wildness of the night before they came out on the other side and made their way to the infirmary. The path from the cloister to the infirmary John could have walked with his eyes shut. William lagged behind him a little. It was of no use trying to follow a man in a black habit on a dark night; the path was familiar enough to him too, but he was glad of the glimmers of moonlight on puddles and stones.

“Brother Michael,” said their abbot when they found him in the dispensary preparing sleeping doses and draughts for coughs and pain, “I have brought you this man because he is exhausted. I think I'll leave him here with you for a couple of nights.”

John turned as William started to protest. “Brother, are you arguing with me? You have had pneumonia once this year; I am not risking your health over a pot of money. I will not have it said that any man succumbed to exhaustion and nervous debility on my watch. Two nights only. In the daytime tomorrow you can do your work as usual, but just until supper time. After Vespers you come back here and do the same as tonight, which will be to take a cup of hot milk and honey with sleep herbs infused in it, and take your rest until Chapter. And you will take your midday meal here in the infirmary—yes, you
will
. What's the matter? Why are you shaking your head at me like that?”

“Father, I… I have to pull us out of the hole I've got us into. I have to be clearheaded, and I have to have the evenings to work on the books—the daytime is so taken up with attending to people and checking things and going hither and thither after different men's needs and concerns. And besides…”

“Well?”

“I have no right to be calling on the resources here. The infirmary was short for herbs and spices before the consignment I ordered went to the bottom of the sea. I can't come here and be using up such candles and precious medicines as we have—‘Brother, I'm in pain, I can't sleep, can I have something to help me?' ‘No, Father William's consumed what he hasn't lost.'”

The bell for Compline began to toll. “Leave him here with me,” intervened Brother Michael, who had listened to William and watched him thoughtfully as he spoke. “Perhaps you will help me, Brother, take these doses to the men who need them, and then you and I can take a hot drink together and talk about this. Come, my brother. It's a while since I've had a chance to spend time with you; I've missed your company.”

Abbot John smiled as William reluctantly acquiesced. Brother Michael put into William's hands a tray of physic doses to carry and laid a couple of cloths over his arm, and John withdrew without another word, giving silent thanks to the God who had made and moulded Brother Michael from the dust of the earth and then set him walking in the direction of St Alcuin's infirmary.
One less thing to worry about tonight
, he thought as he hurried back through the gusting rain to the candlelit choir, there to settle the day, the world, and the community down to rest.

William offered no small challenge to any man charged with managing him, but Brother Michael proved equal to the task. Before the brothers in the chapel had sung the last responsory, William found himself tucked into bed with a hot stone at his cold feet, his belly less tense than it usually felt, comfortably warmed by a hot, sweet, milky drink, and an unfamiliar feeling of peace pervading his senses as valerian, oats, hops, and lavender did their good work. His last thought before he fell asleep was that he couldn't quite account for how this had happened to him because he couldn't remember agreeing to it exactly at any given point.

The next day he found he could concentrate better than he had been, and when he ate with Brother Michael in the infirmary instead of taking his meal in the frater with the community, for the first time in a while he was able to eat without feeling sick. He made no further protest against his second night in the infirmary, but the day after that filled gradually with dread as he contemplated entering the warming room after Vespers in the evening. He was not entirely sure he could force himself to do it, but it had been required of him as an obedience, so he tidied away his work at the end of the afternoon. He still had the key to the checker. He might have been told to limit his time there, but he would not have it further limited by what Brother Ambrose might choose to do.