Aelred's Sin (32 page)

‘Well, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t see Basil too. Maybe Basil will talk to both of us. We must use those who have gone before. Aelred of Rievaulx, Basil and Sebastian.’

‘What about Benedict?’

‘I don’t know. This isn’t what he meant by sorting out our differences.’

‘But he’s no fool. He knows that I felt attracted to you.’

‘Well, like Aelred of Rievaulx, he felt that we should explore it and use it for our spiritual life.’

‘It must be dawn.’

‘The bells for Matins will ring out soon. Maybe we should make our way to the novitiate. Have you seen my belt?’

‘Yes, here it is. I long for everything to return to normal. We must try hard.’

Aelred and Edward sat at the edge of the barn and watched the first swallows emerge from the eaves above the dairy. The birds from Africa clicked and swooped. The novices watched the night turning into the beginnings of dawn.

‘We call this “foreday morning” back in Les Deux Isles.’

‘The dawn before the dawn?’

‘Yes. See the swallows.’

They sat lost in their own thoughts.

Aelred watched the park emerge from the night into the day. ‘That foreday morning they find Mungo body hanging from the mango tree down Hangman Alley.’ Toinette begins to close her story.

Aelred tells his own stories to himself.

Dark clouds are moving fast in the sky above. I lie low with my heart.

I cannot let another night like last night happen to me. I cannot stay with my bundle in the stable. I cannot stay near the contraptions.

I hide last night away. But I cannot keep it a secret from myself.

Master Walter come back drunk from a drinking bout. I must watch him in that state. For then he can fly into a fury. But tonight is different. He is stumbling around in the stable with his breeches down and he is calling wildly for his little nigger boy. I want to be one of those mice that live under the straw and bite me in the night. He is
standing over me, Master Walter. I pretend to sleep even when he kick me. Even when I feel the hot stream of piss over my face. Even when he kick me again. Even when he kneel and open my mouth for the hot stream of piss. Even when I choke and vomit. Even when he finish with his pissing and even when he find my mouth a soft and slippery hole for his member. And he straining and straining and it won’t finish, it won’t finish till what he do I cannot tell you. For my mouth is suffocated against the straw and he is humped on my back like a pig at the trough. Even then I am asleep, even then I sleep when he fall over me breathing and sighing, so that even this stinking hulk feel like some tender pig in its trough. Is the first time that I hear Master Walter sigh and mumble softly to himself. I think, is not him. Is not me. I asleep.

But I cannot sleep when Master Walter revive and he drag me to the room with the peeping hole and the contraptions and where he hang me against the wall to whip me. He remember who I is. Then I cannot sleep but remain till dawn when Miss Amy come to collect my body in a heap against the wall of the stable where he, Master Walter, drag me and drop me.

She has water and lint to sop and assuage.

I know that the darkness is my protection so I stay out in the fields all night. I crouch between the hayricks at the bottom of the field where earlier in the day I hide the small parcel of food Miss Amy give me for my journey. You must keep out of the way of Master Walter in the daytime, my lad, and at night you must not stay where he thinks you lie asleep, for then you are easy prey. You are a quarry for his hunt. You must go out into the darkness. Your blackness will help you, my lad. Out in the
night he will not find you if you hide in the fields. You sprinkle this cayenne near the entrance to the hayrick and the scent will disturb the dogs, put them off your smell.

Miss Amy have everything plan for me.

When I know that my master is eating his supper and will not be calling for me, so will not be missing me, I go out into the darkness and make for the hayrick at the bottom of the field. I lie there thinking my own thoughts, which are commonly of those other times I have to save myself from a cruel master. I cannot bring myself to leave altogether. For where do I run in England? I is dependent on Miss Amy and her kindness. But for how long can I depend upon it? I must plan to run.

Dripping wet from his baptism of immersion, Aelred of Rievaulx waited in his cold nakedness for his phantoms to retreat into their darkness. In the corner of his oratorium, below the stone lid, the rushing water, normally icy cold, bubbled and steamed with his passion, in the way of the best-written hagiography.

The one whom he had loved extravagantly from the court of Scotland was still hanging from the cross where his Christ should have hung. He hung within his Saviour’s figure, but was fading by the power of the Abbot’s will and the grace of God. He still tried to smile and invite him to climb up into his embrace, but instead, Aelred lay down naked upon the cold flagstones of his cell in the form of a cross and waited for the last of the evil passion to leave his body and his cell.

He was woken from his prayer by a knock on his door. It continued. When he registered the knocking, it
seemed as if he had been lost in prayer for hours. When he looked up at the crucifix, the image of his Saviour hung in his simple pristine state, the image of the one who had died for his sins.

Aelred rose and covered his nakedness with his woollen habit. After he had buckled his sandals and rearranged his scapular, so that all looked normal and appropriately decorous, he approached the door and the now frantic knocking. The apparition, as it seemed, that presented itself to the worn Abbot after his own personal ordeal with the evil one was of two of his young novices, Ivo and Gratian.

They were drenched and their woollen habits hung sodden and clinging to their wet bodies. Their hoods were still on, hugging their heads and shoulders. They fell to their knees. ‘Father, forgive us,’ they beseeched, in unison, with raised heads and forlorn eyes. They put out their arms to touch the hem of his habit. He knelt to meet them and lift them up from where they knelt abjectly, asking for forgiveness. ‘Bless us, Father, for we have sinned.’

‘My sons,’ he interrupted them, taking their words into his mouth with kisses on their cheeks and lips, drawing them to him as a mother who suckles her young babes, as a father in heaven saves his drowning sons from the dangerous cataracts. ‘My sons.’ He warmed their shivering bodies, lifting them up, walking them, an arm around the shoulders of each, into his cell and sitting them near the fireplace. He soon kindled a flame in the embers of the fire of the night before and warmed a little wine he allowed himself for his arthritis.

‘My brothers, sit and tell me your troubles. Unburden
to me the torments of your minds and bodies, for which you beseech so earnestly for forgiveness. How can I forgive if there has been no transgression, no sin, no offence against Our Lord, your brethren, or your dear father and brother, myself? Tell me, dear friends.’

They looked at each other, their eyes holding both terror and fear. They looked at their holy Abbot. They cast their eyes into the fire. ‘We were …’ They each made to speak at the same time, hoping that the other would carry on and that somehow they could be rescued now from describing what they had done.

‘My sons, there is nothing to fear. You are already sorry for whatever it is you imagine you have done, and that sorrow in itself is sign of forgiveness. But draw closer to the fire and dry your damp habits. Sip some more wine and raise your spirits. Come, Ivo, my young brother,’ and the Abbot Aelred drew young Ivo to him. ‘Come, hold my hand, place your palms in mine and know that this is good. This feeling is good. Our bodies are good. They are the temples of the Holy Spirit. It’s in these physical vessels of flesh and blood, that God sees fit to manifest himself, in the love we have for one another. Do not be afraid of this. And you, my dearest Gratian, with those angelic eyes, fear not the beauty which God has bestowed upon you; fear not that your beauty draws others to you. Believe me, brothers, your father knows your troubles before you can find words to describe them. They are already described to my eye and ear and have an ancestry in my flesh, which has warmed this very night to the phantoms that the evil one disguises himself in: masks of holiness, sometimes images most familiar and innocent. But I have prayed before them and I have, with the grace of Our Lord,
staunched the flames of their rising passions, unruly, but capable of filling you with delightful feelings. Brothers, believe me, these delights leave you bereft of lasting delight, which you may have been fooled that they would give to you.’

Ivo and Gratian listened, entranced by the mellifluous wisdom and consolation which flowed from their abbot’s lips.

Gratian spoke first. ‘Father, how do you know these things? You don’t in a direct manner say to us that you know what we have done, and yet your intimations suggest that you know almost the very details of our transgressions. The fervour of your voice convinces me …’

‘Me too,’ said Ivo.

‘You do indeed know, and can speak from experience, not like some of the confessors who don’t seem to understand the beauty we have to resist, so that we can follow the ideals of chaste love, a love that gives and does not take.’

‘You speak well, Gratian, but you must also take. We need to feed our hungry selves. All cannot be fasting and abstinence. Therefore I encourage you, dear brothers,’ and Aelred drew his young monks close to him, so that the three sat huddled and warm in each other’s arms. ‘Hold hands, touch fingers, stroke the face of your brother so,’ and he stroked their young faces and kissed them on the cheeks. ‘Allow your love to gaze into your beloved’s eyes. Do not resist these impulses, dear brothers, and above all put into words your love, confess your love, discuss your love, write letters of love and friendship, and allow your spiritual selves to grow in this love, which is a spiritual friendship. Cherish your friend.
He who scorns friendship is an animal. God is friendship, brothers.’

‘Father, I feel so good now.’ Ivo took the liberty to rest his head on his abbot’s shoulder.

‘And you, Ivo, you are quiet and let Gratian do all the talking.’

‘I too, Father, grow to feel more reconciled to myself and to those impulses I cannot control.’

‘Know, my son, that the beauty you see in Gratian, the beauty I see in Gratian is the luminosity of God’s own beauty, manifested in his creation. This is good. Cherish it and cherish your feelings for it.’

‘But, Father, I tempted him by my attraction to him. I flattered him so that he weakened in his chaste resolve, and because he did not want to hurt me, because he loves me, he allowed me to lead him astray. He allowed me to …’

‘And now, my sons, you must ready yourself for Matins. Don’t speak of those deeds; that in itself is a way the evil one has of tempting us further: of tempting us by the power of those words that describe those deeds, to commit similar deeds, and so to be for ever entrapped by reflecting on sin rather than on the goodness of Our Lord and his immeasurable grace. So no more, and rest assured that I, your abbot, have been up all night wrestling with the evil one, so that you may be saved, and your coming straight to my door and knocking me up from my meditation is proof that God has heard my prayers and has bestowed His forgiveness upon you. Think of it no more and go get dry habits and proceed to choir for the chanting of the divine psalms.’

Ivo and Gratian left their abbot’s cell in peace. Parting
at the end of the corridor, they kissed each other on both cheeks and went to their cells, which they had not visited since Vespers.

The sky had lifted. The storm had broken. The River Rye was swollen and flooding the nearby surrounding fields along its bank.

As Ivo and Gratian, each in their individual cells, changed into dry habits before going to Matins and reflected on the words and wisdom of their abbot, they found themselves naked before the windows in their cells. And, looking out to the fields and the river, they each still clung to the naked body of the other in the barn amidst the warm hay and the lowing of the cattle, breathing heavily in the darkness. The storm breaking, and the rain locking them away from the monastic rhythm of the world, they could be tempted by their past misdemeanours.

In choir, in the simplicity of their church, with its bare stone and unadorned wood, kneeling, reclining, sitting, standing, chanting the Divine Office, they sought a simplicity and peace that was not as natural as the desire and passion of their night together in the barn; though their ideal was to make it so, to be angels and not men in that expression of their desire.

A thick mist shrouded the valley and all Ashton Park. The bells came to Aelred and Edward muffled, but announcing clearly enough, their call to the two novices that they should rise to sing the praises of the psalmist who rises in the night to praise his Lord.
‘Domine
labia
mea
aperies
et
os
meum
annuntiabit
laudem
tuam
…
Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall announce your praise …’

Aelred and Edward rose without talking. They stood together and held on to each other. Then climbed down the ladder, one behind the other. They made their way through the apple orchard. They had to enter the house without being seen. They walked quickly and quietly. They felt like children, like naughty children, like Adam and Eve hiding in the garden in the afternoon when they heard the voice of God calling them and realised that they were naked. They had eaten of the tree of knowledge. They had yielded to the temptation of the serpent. They would have to work by the sweat of their brows. They would have to suffer. God told them so, sending his Archangel Michael with a fiery sword to drive them out of the garden.

But for Aelred and Edward, there was no burning sword, just the damp morning and a sinking feeling in their stomachs that they had lost themselves and each other, and, possibly, their vocations at St Aelred’s in Ashton Park.