The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [106]
‘Probably not. But you can’t trust them.’
‘Where’d you go?’
‘On pilgrimage, maybe. Compostella. Thousands of people go there.’
Compostella. Spain. You could beg along the way, they said. She doubted it. She shook her head. ‘You’ve never been out of the Forest.’
‘I like walking, though.’
For a while they were silent.
‘What’s happening with Brother Adam, then?’ he asked.
Now it was her turn to announce worrying news. ‘I think I’m pregnant.’
‘Oh. You sure?’
‘Almost. I think so. It feels like it.’
‘Couldn’t be Tom?’ She shook her head. ‘What’ll you do?’ She only shrugged. Luke was thoughtful. ‘Reckon you and Tom … You’d better give him a chance to think it’s his, hadn’t you?’
She took a long breath. ‘I know.’ Her voice was flat. He’d never heard it quite like that before.
‘You’ve been with him a lot of years. Can’t be so bad.’
‘You don’t understand.’ He didn’t. They were all just forest creatures to him.
‘You going to tell Brother Adam?’
‘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