The Forest (33 page)

‘Maybe.’

‘You know, Mary, this can’t go on. I mean, it’ll be winter. Tom’ll be home. You’ve a family and Brother Adam’s a monk.’

‘There’ll be next spring and summer, Luke.’

‘But Mary …’

How could he understand? He was a simple boy. She might lie with Tom. She’d have to. There was no way out of that, really. But Adam was there too. She’d heard women talk about lovers. Such things occurred in some villages, especially around harvest time. Perhaps when she’d started with Brother Adam she’d thought that, being a monk, he’d be safe: back in Beaulieu Abbey where he belonged when it was over. The trouble was, she had known a finer kind of man now. The fact of Brother Adam could never be taken from her. She could not step back into the same stream. The landscape had subtly changed.

‘Beaulieu’s not far, Luke. I’m not going back to only Tom.’

‘You have to.’

‘No.’

Luke and Puckle talked for a long time that night.

In the end Puckle said: ‘I think you’ve got to do it.’

‘Will you help me?’ Luke asked.

‘Of course.’

If one walked along the eastern side of the cloister at Beaulieu from the church one came first to the big locked cupboard – for that was all it was – known as the bookcase, where the abbey’s stock of books was mostly kept. Then came the vestry; after that the larger chapter house where every Monday morning, while the abbot was away, Grockleton would read out the abbey’s rules to the assembled monks. Then the scriptorium where Brother
Adam liked to spend his time studying, then the monks’ dormitory and just round the corner, next to the big
frater
, was the warming house, a spacious room with a fire.

John of Grockleton had just emerged from the warming house when the message came and he hurried to the gate.

The messenger was a servant, from Alban, who desired to speak with him privately. His message caused the prior’s face to crease into a smile: ‘We think we have Brother Luke, Prior.’

The problem was that he wasn’t talking. Alban, it seemed, was reluctant to turn up at the abbey with him unless he was quite sure who he was. Otherwise, he felt, they’d all be made to look like fools again. So he was holding the fellow secretly at his house. Would the prior come, discreetly, and identify the lay brother? ‘I am to conduct you, if you are willing,’ the servant explained.

‘I shall come at once,’ Grockleton said and sent to the stables for his horse.

It was all the prior could do, as they rode across the heath, to contain his enthusiasm. They proceeded at a trot or a canter. He would happily have galloped. At the far edge of the heath, they entered the woods west of Brockenhurst and started to canter along a track. The prior was smiling. He had hardly been happier in his life.

‘This way, sir,’ called the servant again, taking a track to the left. ‘Short cut.’ The track was narrower. Once or twice he was smacked in the face by overhanging branches, but he didn’t care. ‘This way, sir,’ called the servant, veering right. He followed eagerly, then frowned. Where the devil had the fellow gone? He pulled up. Called out.

And was greatly astonished when a pair of hands seized him from behind, pulling him off his horse and, before he even had time to struggle, slipped a rope round him which, a second later was made fast to a tree.

He was about to cry out ‘Murder! Thieves!’ when
another figure appeared miraculously in front of him. A shaggy, forest figure whom he recognized, after only a moment, Brother Luke.

‘You!’ His natural posture was to lean forward. Now the prior strained towards him so hard it seemed as if he meant to bite him.

‘It’s all right,’ the insolent fellow replied. ‘I only wanted a talk. I’d have come to the abbey, but …’ He smiled and shrugged.

‘What do you want?’

‘To return to the abbey.’

‘Are you mad?’

‘No, Prior. I hope not.’ He sat down on the ground in front of Grockleton. ‘Can I talk?’

It was not, Grockleton had to admit, what he would have expected. Firstly, Luke spoke of the abbey and its granges and his years there. He did so quite simply and with such feeling that, like it or not, Grockleton could see that he genuinely loved the place. Then he explained what had happened that day at the grange. He made no excuses about letting the poachers in, but explained how he had tried to stop Brother Matthew striking Martell and how he had panicked and fled. Little as he liked this either, the prior secretly guessed that it was true.

‘You should have returned then.’

‘I was afraid. Afraid of you.’

It did not wholly displease Grockleton that this peasant should be afraid of him. ‘And why should I do anything for you now?’ he demanded.

‘If I told you something important, for the good of the abbey, something nobody knows, might you see your way …?’

‘It’s possible.’ Grockleton considered.

‘It would be bad for one of the monks, though.’

Grockleton frowned. ‘Which monk?’

‘Brother Adam. It’d be very bad for him.’

‘What is it?’ The prior could not conceal the glint in his eye.

Luke saw it. This was what he needed. ‘You’ve got to send him away. No scandal. That’d be bad for the abbey anyway. He’s got to go away. And I’ve got to come back, with no more Forest court or anything. You can arrange that. I need your word.’

Grockleton hesitated. He understood deals and his word was his word. But there was an obvious difficulty. ‘Priors don’t bargain with lay brothers,’ he said frankly.

‘You’ll never hear another sound from me afterwards. That’s my word.’

Grockleton pondered. He put it all in the balance. He thought also of the reaction of the court and the foresters, who he knew very well were sick of him, if they heard this honest fellow speak as eloquently in court as he had just done now. He might be better off with Luke on his side. And then … Luke said he had something on Brother Adam. ‘If it’s good, you have my word,’ he heard himself saying.

So Luke betrayed Brother Adam and his sister Mary.

Except, Grockleton thought as he listened to the peasant, that it was not really a betrayal. Seen from Luke’s point of view there was something profoundly natural about it. He saw his sister’s family about to be blasted by a storm; so he was protecting them. A sudden blow, the shedding of blood; it was just nature.

Nor did the perfect balance of the thing escape the prior. Once Adam was gone, Mary would have no choice but to live in peace with her husband. The child would be treated as Tom’s. It was in nobody’s interest to say a word. Except his own, of course, if he wanted entirely to destroy Brother Adam. But even that made no sense. For if he exposed Adam, he’d damage the abbey’s reputation. And what would the abbot say about that? No, the peasant’s
judgement was good. Besides. He thought of something else, something in the secret book, known only to the abbot. He had to be a little careful himself.

What of Luke, though? Could he be trusted to behave himself? Probably. He had no wish to hurt his sister by making trouble, though he continued to hold the threat of his knowledge about the monk as a sort of protection. In any case, I’m better off with him safely inside the abbey than outside, the prior considered.

And so, for the first time in his life, Grockleton started to think like an abbot.

With what joy, a few days later, the monks of Beaulieu learned that their abbot had returned and that, so far as he knew, there were no plans for him to depart from them again in the foreseeable future.

Brother Adam, too, was glad. His only concern was lest the abbot, out of a now mistaken sense of kindness, should decide to relieve him of his duties at the granges. He had prepared for this carefully, however. His record was excellent. It would take anyone else a year to learn what he now knew. Who else would want the job? For the good of the abbey he should certainly keep it another year or two. All in all, he hoped he was well prepared.

As for his guilty secret, he had learned to get through the offices now without the terror of giving himself away. He had already, he confessed to himself, become hardened in his sin. He was just glad the abbot knew nothing, that was all.

When he received a summons to present himself before the abbot and the prior one morning he was prepared for everything except what awaited him.

The abbot looked friendly, if somewhat thoughtful, when he entered. Grockleton was sitting there, leaning forward with his claw on the table as usual. But Adam was too glad to be looking at the abbot again to take much notice of the prior. And it was the abbot, not Grockleton, who spoke.
‘Now, Adam, we know all about your love affair with Mary Furzey. Fortunately neither her husband nor the brethren in the abbey do. So I’d just like you to tell us about it in your own words.’

Grockleton had wanted to ask him whether he had anything to confess and give him the chance to perjure himself, but the abbot had overruled him.

It did not take long. If his humiliation was complete, the abbot did nothing to prolong it. ‘This will remain a secret,’ he told Adam, ‘for the sake of the abbey and, I may add, for that of the woman and her family. You must leave here at once. Today. But I want no one to know why.’

‘Where am I to go?’

‘I’m sending you to our daughter house down in Devon. To Newenham. Nobody will think that strange. They’ve been struggling a bit down there and you are – or were – one of our best monks.’

Adam bowed his head. ‘May I say farewell to Mary Furzey?’

‘Certainly not. You are to have no communication with her whatsoever.’

‘I am surprised’ – it was Grockleton now, he couldn’t resist it – ‘that you should even think of such a thing.’

‘Well.’ Adam sighed. Then he looked at Grockleton sadly, though without malice. ‘You have never done such a thing.’

There was silence in the room. The claw did not move. Perhaps the prior might have stooped forward a little lower over the dark old table. The abbot’s face was a mask as he gazed carefully into the middle distance. So Brother Adam did not guess that in the abbot’s secret book there was a notation concerning John of Grockleton and a woman, and a child. But that had been in another monastery, far away in the north, a long time ago.

After he had gone the abbot asked: ‘He doesn’t know she’s pregnant, does he?’

‘No.’

‘Better he shouldn’t.’

‘Quite.’ Grockleton nodded.

‘Oh dear.’ The abbot sighed. ‘We are none of us safe from falling, as you know,’ he added meaningfully.

‘I know.’

‘I want him given two pairs of new shoes,’ the abbot added firmly, ‘before he goes.’

It was not quite noon when Brother Adam and John of Grockleton, accompanied by one lay brother, rode slowly out of the abbey and up the track that led to Beaulieu Heath.

As he rode, Adam noticed the small trees that crowned the slope opposite the abbey. The salt sea breeze from the south-west had not bent them, but shaped the tops so that they all looked as if they had been shaved down that side; and they flowered towards the north-east. It was a common sight in the coastal parts of the Forest.

White clouds were scudding over the tranquil, sunlit abbey behind them and, as they crested the little ridge, Adam felt the sharp salt breeze full upon his face.

Brother Luke returned quietly to St Leonards Grange a week later. His case did not come up before the justice at the Michaelmas court.

At about the time of the court, Mary told her husband that he might be going to be a father again.

‘Oh.’ He frowned, then grinned, a little puzzled. ‘That was a lucky one.’

‘I know.’ She shrugged. ‘These things happen.’

He might have thought about it more, except that, a short time later, John Pride – who had suffered two hours of his brother Luke’s urging – turned up to suggest that their quarrel should be over. With him he brought the pony.

On a December afternoon, when a yellow wintry sun, low on the horizon, was sending its parting rays across the frozen landscape of Beaulieu Heath, which was covered in snow, two riders, muffled against the cold, made their way slowly eastwards towards the abbey.

The snow had fallen days before; and right across the heath, now, there was a thin layer of icy crust, which broke as the horses’ hoofs stepped on it. A light, chill breeze came from the east, sweeping little particles of snow and ice dust across the surface. The branches of the snow-covered bushes cast long shadows, fingering eastwards towards Beaulieu.

Five years had passed since Brother Adam had left the abbey to go down to the bleak little daughter house of Newenham, so far along the western coast – five years with only a dozen other brothers in the little wilderness. It might have seemed a cheerless scene that greeted him now, this icy landscape lit by the sulphurous yellow glow of a falling winter sun, but he was not aware of it. He was only aware, as if by a homing instinct, that the grey buildings by the river lay less than an hour away.

It is a curious fact, never fully explained, that at around this time in history a number of the monks belonging to the little house of Newenham in Devon started suffering from a particular affliction. The abbey records of Beaulieu make this very clear, but whether it was the water, the diet, something in the earth or the buildings themselves, nobody has ever been able to discover. Several, however, suffered so acutely that there was nothing to do for them but bring them back to Beaulieu where they could be looked after.