XXXVI
The abbot isn’t happy. He sticks his hand in the pockets of his white habit; he blows out his cheeks, like a cat fluffing its fur to make itself seem bigger. He looks at the hermit, a biblical figure in his brown tunic and long white beard; and at the man beside him: the scars, the nose that didn’t set right after a shield boss broke it, the strength in the arms.
‘The monastery is full,’ he says.
He’s a fat man in a lean land. He didn’t get that way by taking in monks who couldn’t earn their keep. He wants younger sons from established families: youths who’ll bring donations, patronage, bequests. He doesn’t want an orphan grubbed out of the forest — disruptive, burdensome, and with who knows what sins on his conscience. But the hermit carries spiritual weight. The abbot has to at least pretend to listen to him.
‘What is your name?’
‘Chr … Chrétien.’ The name doesn’t fit me yet, though I’m determined it will. The abbot makes a face. He thinks I’m trying to impress him with my piety.
He stares at my head. The hermit cropped my hair almost to the skull, but there’s still a remnant of the false tonsure I had for the assault. Does he think I’m a miscreant monk who fled his former home? Or has he heard of the men who dressed as murdered monks and slaughtered the garrison of the Île de Pêche? I think probably not. I doubt Malegant left witnesses.
‘Have you taken orders before?’
‘Minor orders. A long time ago.’
I look around the Abbot’s room. He may be fat, but he isn’t prodigaclass="underline" the room is as Spartan as you’d expect. The only indulgence I can see is books. He has the usual literature of his office — Bible, missal, breviary and account books — but also many more: fine volumes bound in leather. I can see Vergil, Ovid, Cicero and Caesar.
He follows my gaze. He wonders if I’m planning to rob him.
‘I can read and write,’ I volunteer. ‘Both Latin and Romanse.’
The abbot licks his lips. ‘Brother Edward, who worked in the scriptorium, died two months ago. It’s hard to find someone to replace him around here.’
‘At least take him as a novice,’ the hermit suggests.
I still don’t understand what happened in the field of stones — if I left this world for a time, like the men in my mother’s stories; if I dreamed it; or if, even more strangely, it might have been real. However it transpired, Peter of Camros died that night.
The birth-pangs of my new life were hard and painful. The hermit served as midwife. He found me in the forest and took me to his home, a turf cell by a spring. For six days I lay on a fern bier delirious with a fever. He kept me alive with honey and bread dipped in milk; he used his arts to make salves, which he spread on my forehead; he whispered prayers in my ear.
When the fever left me, he suggested I make a confession.
‘Something inside you is blocking your heart like a stone. You have to remove it if you want to be whole again.’
His hair grew wild, matted and long and streaked with mud. But there was a profound stillness in his deep brown eyes. A trust.
I knelt in front of him in the forest. I told him how for years I had hated God, how I wandered blindly without knowing where I was going. How everything I did was evil. I confessed it all. My adultery with Ada. The men I killed, from Athold du Laurrier to the Count’s guards on the Île de Pêche. Long before I finished, tears were streaming down my face. The sins had taken deep hold on my soul, but I tore them up by their roots and cast them out for the hermit to see. I wondered if there would be anything left to hold me together without them.
The hermit heard me out in silence. When I had finished, I looked into his eyes to see what he thought. He’d closed them: but even his powers of self-will couldn’t mask the horror on his face. A hermit, not a saint.
‘Terrible crimes,’ he murmured.
The words struck me like a lance. My face grew hot. Part of me wanted to hit him, to break his sanctimonious body and beat the forgiveness I craved out of him. Part of me, perhaps the greater part, knew I didn’t deserve it. I curled over, rocking on my knees.
Something fluttered against my forehead like a moth. I reached up to swat it away, but it resisted me. I opened my eyes. The hermit’s hand was trembling with the effort as he laid it on my head.
‘God is Love, and according to the Scriptures, whoever abides in Love, abides in God, and God in him.’
He stared into my eyes. I could see the conflict inside him.
‘Will you abide in Christ? Will you show love to the loveless, charity to the destitute, pity to the pitiless?’
I nodded. He made me repeat the words and I did, stumbling over them in my eagerness. I needed his forgiveness like a seed craves sun.
‘Christ forgive you all your sins, and make you perfect in every way.’
He took the wooden bowl he used and scooped it in the spring. I remembered a story my mother used to tell, about a magic spring that summoned a knight to do battle if you drank from it. The hermit poured the water over my head. It ran down my face and washed away my tears until I could no longer taste the salt.
Almost to himself, I heard him whisper, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall have mercy.’
So Chrétien was born.
I wanted to stay with him, but he wouldn’t let me. Day by day I saw his impatience growing, though he did his best to hide it. I had blundered into his solitude: he had shared it with me for a little while, but now he wanted it back.
When I was strong enough to walk, he took me down to the monastery.
It’s easier being a monk than I thought it would be — not so different from being a knight. The monks are soldiers of Christ garrisoning the wildest frontiers of Christendom: the abbey is their fortress. They’ve diverted the river to make a moat; they’ve built high walls and watchtowers; they’ve cleared a swathe of forest so no one approaches without being seen. An internal wall divides the compound into an inner and an outer ward. I work in the scriptorium in the inner ward, off a cloister bounded on one side by the church and on another by the refectory and the dormitories. I rarely have to leave the cloister, let alone the inner ward.
As I novice, I share a cell with boys half my age, whispering in the dark. It’s like being back at Hautfort. We joust with words and try to outdo each other in feats of piety, but otherwise there’s little difference. I’m a child again.
But children grow. For a time, I bask in my redemption; I’m like a parchment that’s been scraped clean, unwritten. But the shadows of the old words still remain stained in the skin. If you look between the glossy lines of new text, you can see the ghosts. Sometimes I wake up screaming in the dormitory, drawn back to the castle on the island or the chapel by the forest. The girl in the castle and Ada haunt my dreams — sometimes one, sometimes the other, always pierced through the breast, too late for me to save. The other novices think I harbour a demon.
Months go by. Each day, I sit at my copy-desk transcribing someone else’s words. Errors start creeping into my work; the Librarian scolds me; I stare out the window and nurse old memories back to life.
Peter of Camros. I wondered when you’d remember yourself.
Peter’s dead — I’m Chrétien now. But even the monastery’s stout walls and safe rituals can’t keep out my past. All my life I’ve been pushed down this road I didn’t choose. I’ve failed in every bond of love or duty I ever undertook: my family; my lord Guy; Ada. To lock myself in the monastery now won’t redeem me: it’ll bury me.
I need answers. I need to find Malegant.
One day the Abbot comes to me. He wants me to travel to our mother house, the priory near Châteaubriant. The Librarian there has given him permission to copy certain works they hold. He almost salivates as he describes their library, listing the manuscripts he covets in loving detail. I’m given a list, a mule to carry the books back and a small purse to pay for vellum and ink. I don’t have to worry about travelling alone. The Cellarer and two of his assistants will be taking a cart of wool to the cloth fair.