The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [63]
The abbot sighed, closed the book, carried it over to a large strong box in which he placed it and carefully locked the box.
He had made a mistake. The last abbot’s judgement, which he had so foolishly ignored, was right. The man’s character was clear: he was flawed and possibly dangerous.
‘So why did I appoint him?’ he murmured. Had he done it as a sort of penance? Perhaps. He had told himself that the man deserved a chance, that he had earned the position, that it was up to him as abbot – with prayer and the grace of God, of course – to make it work. As for his crime? It was in the book. It was long ago. God is merciful.
He glanced out through the open window. It was a beautiful day. Then his eyes fell on a pair of figures, walking quietly together in conversation. At the sight of these his face relaxed.
Brother Adam. There was a very different type. One of the best. He smiled. It was time to go outside. He unbolted the door.
Brother Adam was in a playful mood. As he sometimes did when he was pacing, he had pulled out the little wooden crucifix that hung on a cord round his neck, under his hair shirt, and was thoughtfully fingering it. His mother had given it to him when he first entered the order. She said she had got it from a man who had been to the Holy Land. It was carved from the wood of a cedar of Lebanon. He was enjoying the fact that the afternoon sun was gently warming his bald head. He had gone bald, and grey, by the time he was thirty. But this had not made him look old. Thirty-five, now, his finely cut, even features gave him a look of almost youthful intelligence, while one could sense that, under the monk’s habit, his thick, muscular body exuded a sense of physical power.
He was also quietly enjoying the business in hand, which was, as they paced up and down between two beds of vegetables, to inculcate, in the kindest way, some much-needed common sense into the young novice who walked respectfully beside him.
People often came to Brother Adam for advice, because he was calm and clever, yet always approachable. He never offered advice unless asked – he was far too shrewd to do that – but it might have been noticed that whatever the problem, after a troubled person had discussed it with Brother Adam for a while, that person nearly always started to laugh, and usually went away smiling.
‘Don’t you ever rebuke people?’ the abbot had once asked him.
‘Oh, no,’ he had replied with a twinkle. ‘That’s what abbots are for.’
The present talk, however, was not entirely comforting. Nor was it meant to be. Brother Adam had given it before. He called it his ‘Truth about Monks’ catechism.
‘Why’, he had asked the novice, ‘do men come to live in a monastery?’
‘To serve God, Brother Adam.’
‘But why in a monastery?’
‘To escape from the sinful world.’
‘Ah.’ Brother Adam gazed around the abbey precincts. ‘A safe haven. Like the Garden of Eden?’
In a way it was. The site the monks had chosen was delightful. Parallel to the great inlet from the Solent water that lay to the east of the Forest a small river ran down, forming a small coastal inlet, about three miles long, of its own. At the head of this inlet, where King John had kept a modest hunting lodge, the monks had laid out their great walled inclosure. It was modelled on the