‘Did you feel as though you were not alone last night?’ I asked.
He swept his hand over his face as he sometimes does when chasing away flies and phantoms.
‘I see wonderful things,’ he murmured in that low, tremulous voice which seemed to belong to someone much older.
The sun had just passed over the nave of our church, the air was full of a promise that would not be fulfilled, and yet there was still some of that joy within me too. I smiled.
‘Not so much arrogance, little brother. I’m telling you, you’re not alone.’ I lay my hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. This gesture, with which Abelard used to subdue me, was now mine. But I would not use it to control or constrain.
I returned to the scriptorium while Guy continued to gaze up at the sky.
The prior found me with the quill of my pen crushed against my scroll of parchment and my head cradled in my elbow. He glanced at the fire burning in the hearth.
‘All this heat and no one to enjoy it,’ he muttered without any bitterness.
He’s a peaceful and seemingly good man who will become abbot as long as no bishop meddles. His nose, eyes and mouth are all squashed untidily over his flat face, and yet there is something truly gentle about this ugliness. One of his legs is stiff, which always makes him look as if he is running, even when he walks.
‘Are you copying?’
I nodded. He asked nothing else. He really must not find out what is concealed beneath my reserved bearing, my stern, scholarly face and my hours of study.
He went out without saying another word.
I penned a few more words – the last. I tightened the sheepskin leather straps that hold the parchment together. I rolled it up inside the rough cloth bag which I slipped beneath my cowl. I stood up and my bones creaked like an old boat.
I knew what I still had to do, I knew every detail of what had to be done up to the moment of my death, and even after.
That evening, after Vespers, I would speak to that innocent, Guy. I would trust him with my secret.
In the midst of the silent night there is no silence. The monks snore, the monks talk and cry out, the monks wrestle with angels and with devils, the monks wail over their childhood nightmares. Only a storm can quieten them and, unfortunately, storms do not occur every night.
My body felt as light as my soul and I wandered about among my brethren as if I were haunting them. I knew where Brother Guy’s bunk was; my hand brushed lightly against him and he opened his eyes. ‘Come, my brother, my friend, the time has come.’ He got up and followed me.
We went down into the Close and left the priory by the east door. We walked in the moonlight, which flooded the abbey in a grey light. There, where as a young clerk I had watched the carpenters erect a wooden ceiling, the stone cupolas rose up like so many skies.
Guy, who was behind me, asked no questions – when I approached the altar and knelt down, he merely shivered slightly.
In the nave, at the height of a man’s arm, almost at the southern corner of the transept, there was a stone that I knew had never been securely fixed. But when I touched it with my hand it did not budge.
Guy heard the cry of surprise that escaped from my lips; he saw me pushing, grumbling and perspiring. I turned to him with tears in my eyes.
Without saying a word, he too attacked the side of the stone with his hands and his fingernails, both of us scraping away at it together, cutting our fingers and scratching our skin, our flesh mingling with the limestone.
The stone did not shift. It was not enough to believe in miracles. When we stopped, out of breath, Brother Guy wiped his hands over his face and on his cowl. We gasped and collapsed on top of one another.
‘Do you see?’ he asked eventually in his low voice.
I didn’t see. He pointed to a cavity, to a length of stone that we had been unable to loosen – one of those putlogs into which scaffolding beams had been placed during the course of construction.
With my hands I indicated the size of the cavity that Guy had discovered. I ran my fingers over the contours and at the same time I thought of it as the Jerusalem that awaited me in my dreams.
In one quick gesture, I took the bag with the scrolls from around my neck and I placed it where it was meant to fit, in this recess where no one would ever find it. No one? I looked at the simpleton, the fool. He helped me replace the stone: he took the dust mixed with blood from the ground and swallowed it. He wiped his lips. No one? The simpleton, the fool would hold his tongue. And if he did talk, nobody would listen to him.
I was weak and unsteady on my legs.
And this is how the monks would find us when the first rays from the east light up the altar – an old man dying in the arms of a child with eyes that are too bright.
PART ONE
Nothing for the Journey
Take nothing for the journey: neither staff, nor haversack, nor bread, nor money; and let none of you take a spare tunic.
LUKE 9:3
I
It was on a frozen mud road in France, one day in the winter of 1116, when Louis VI was king and Stephen de Garlande his chancellor, when Galon was Bishop of Paris and Paschal II our most Holy Father. It was a time of commonplace woes. I was twenty years old but I had seen more than my share of full moons.
My father fought at Hastings against the Normans. It had left him with a real horror of conflict and a good deal of respect for his new king – as my Christian name, William, indicates. When, as a child, I used to dream of tournaments, he was exceedingly persistent in forcing me to study. He handed me over to teachers who knew nothing, and I was beaten for getting the better of them. For months I stopped listening and was tempted to feign stupidity.
Every Latin translation was drummed into me; to avoid further toil I had secretly learned a little Greek. My father would not allow me to duel, even with a wooden sword, even with children who were less robust than me. As far as knowledge of weapons was concerned, I escaped with a few scratches from bushes. Under stormy skies, I confronted springs and the shadows of oak trees.
I would not be a knight.
My only friend was called Stephen. He was an errant priest who sometimes shared the bed of one of our servants. He told me about the world and encouraged me to seek God on my own. He said with a smile that there was nothing more terrible and more beautiful than man.
It was he who told me the secret of my birth – my illegitimacy – and in doing so he did me a great favour as well as much harm. The habit of telling the truth at an early age in a world full of lies is a weapon as well as a hindrance. I continued to respect the person I called my mother, a pale woman with cold hands who never gave me a name, thereby hoping no doubt that I would cease to exist. She did not touch me or so much as glance at me. Not being noticed by those one wants to be noticed by teaches you more about life than do ferulas and beatings – you learn to know that you are not loved, unless by chance or accident.
I would not be a father.
When everyone is desperately trying to make his presence felt and to leave some trace of himself, it is soothing to the soul to make of one’s absence a cloak for all seasons. It was my own way of fleeing to the absolute on one’s own – and without delay.