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By Root 3244 0

order’s parent house in Burgundy. Dominating everything was the abbey church – a large, early Gothic structure with a squat, square tower over the central crossing. Though simple, the building was handsome, and made of stone. There was no stone in the Forest; some of it had been brought across the Solent water from the Isle of Wight; some, like the best stone in the Tower of London, from Normandy; and the pillars were made of the same dark Purbeck marble, from along the south coast, as had been used in the huge new cathedral up at Sarum. The monks were particularly proud of their church’s floor, paved with decorative tiles they had painstakingly made themselves. Beside the church was the cloister; on its southern side the various quarters of the choir monks; along the whole of its western side the huge, barn-like domus conversorum – the house where the lay brothers ate and slept.

The walled inclosure also contained the abbot’s house, numerous workshops, a pair of fish ponds and an outer gatehouse where the poor were fed. A new and grander inner gatehouse had also just been begun.

Outside the wall lay the inlet and a small mill. Above the mill-race was a large pond surrounded by banks of silvery rushes. Beyond that, on the western side, some fields sloped up a small rise, from which there opened out a magnificent panorama: to the north mostly wood and heath; and to the south the rich, marshy land, which the monks had already partly drained to produce several fine farms, and which stretched down to the Solent water, with the long hump of the Isle of Wight lying like a friendly guardian just beyond. The entire estate, woodland, open heath and farmland, extended to some eight thousand acres; and since the boundary was marked by an earthwork ditch and fence, the monks referred not to the walled abbey inclosure, but to the eight-thousand-acre estate itself as the ‘Great Close’.

Bellus Locus, the abbey was called in Latin – the Beautiful Place; in Norman French: Beau Lieu. But the forest people did not speak French, so they pronounced it Boolee, or Bewley. And before long the monks were doing so, too. Rich, tranquil haven that it was, the Great Close of Beaulieu might well have been mistaken for the Garden of Eden.

‘One is secure here, of course,’ Brother Adam remarked pleasantly. ‘We are clothed and fed. We have few cares. So tell me’ – he suddenly rounded on the novice – ‘now that you have had the chance to observe us for several months, what do you think is the most important quality for a monk to possess?’

‘A desire to serve God. I think,’ the boy said. ‘A great religious passion.’

‘Really? Oh, dear. I don’t agree at all.’

‘You don’t?’ The boy looked confused.

‘Let me tell you something,’ Brother Adam cheerfully explained. ‘The first day you pass from your novitiate and become a monk, you will take your place as the most junior among us, next to the monk who was the last to arrive before you. After a time there will be another new monk, who will be placed below you. For every meal and every service you will always sit in the same position between those two monks – every day, every night, year in, year out; and unless one of you leaves for another monastery, or becomes abbot or prior, you will stay together, like that, for the rest of your lives.

‘Think about it. One of your companions has an irritating habit of scratching himself or sings out of tune, always; the other dribbles when he eats; he also has bad breath. And there they are, one each side of you. For ever.’ He paused and beamed at the novice. ‘That’s monastic life,’ he said amiably.

‘But monks live for God,’ the novice protested.

‘And they are also ordinary human beings – no more, no less. That,’ Brother Adam added gently, ‘is why we need God’s grace.’

‘I thought’, the novice said honestly, ‘you were going to be more inspiring.’

‘I know.’

The novice was silent. He was twenty.

‘The most important qualities a monk needs,’ Brother Adam went on, ‘are tolerance and a sense of humour.’ He watched the young man. ‘But these are both gifts of God,’ he added,