The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [65]
The last part of this conversation had been quietly observed. The abbot had actually intended to join them, since he always enjoyed Brother Adam’s company; and he had been secretly irritated when, just as he got outside, the prior had appeared at his elbow. Courtesies must be observed, though. As the prior murmured at his side, the abbot eyed him from time to time, bleakly.
John of Grockleton had been prior for a year now. Like most of his ilk, he was going nowhere.
The position of prior in a monastery is not without honour. This is, after all, the monk whom the abbot has chosen to be his deputy. But that is all. If the abbot is away he is in charge – but only on a day-to-day basis. All major decisions, even the assignment of the monks’ tasks, must await the abbot’s return. The prior is the workhorse, the abbot is the leader. Abbots have charisma; their deputies do not. Abbots solve problems; priors report them. Priors seldom become abbots.
John of Grockleton: properly speaking, he was just Brother John, but somehow his original name, Grockleton, had always been appended. Where the devil was Grockleton anyway? The abbot couldn’t remember. In the north, perhaps. He didn’t really care. Prior John of Grockleton was nothing much to look at. He must have been quite tall once, before the curving of his spine caused him to stoop. His thin black hair had once been thick. But despite these infirmities, the prior still had plenty of life left in him. He’ll outlive me I’m sure, the abbot thought.
If only it weren’t for those hands. It always seemed to the abbot that they were like claws. He tried to correct himself. They were just hands. A bit bony, perhaps, a bit curved. But no worse than any other pair of hands belonging to one of God’s creatures. Except they were like claws.
‘I’m glad to see that our young novice is seeking instruction from Brother Adam,’ he remarked to the prior. ‘Beatus vir, qui non sequitur …’ Psalm One: Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly … Verse One.
‘Sed in lege Domine …’ the prior quietly murmured. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. Verse Two.
It was quite natural, this reference to the psalms in ordinary conversation. Even the lay brothers, who attended fewer services, did it. For in the constant monastic offices in the church that punctuated the daily life of every monk, from matins to vespers and compline, and even the night office for which you were wakened long after midnight, it was the psalms, in Latin of course, that the brothers chanted. They could get through all hundred and fifty in a week.
And all human life was in the Psalms. There was a phrase apposite to every occasion. Just as simple village folk would often converse in local sayings and proverbs, so it was natural for the monks to speak the psalms. These were the words they heard all the time.
‘Yes. The law of the Lord.’ The abbot nodded. ‘He has studied, of course, hasn’t he? At Oxford.’ Their order was not an intellectual one, but a dozen years ago there had been a move to send a few of the brightest monks to Oxford. Brother Adam had gone from Beaulieu.
‘Oxford.’ John of Grockleton said it with distaste. The abbot might approve of Oxford, but he didn’t. He knew the psalms by rote: that was enough. People like Brother Adam might think themselves superior. But although the monks at Oxford had been quartered well away from the university city itself, they were still sharing the worldly corruption of the place. They weren’t better than he was, they were worse.
‘One of these days, when I have gone,’ the abbot remarked, ‘Brother Adam would make a good abbot – don’t you think?’ And he looked at the prior as though he expected him to agree.
‘That will be after my time,’ Grockleton answered sourly.
‘Nonsense, my dear Brother John,’ the abbot said happily. ‘You’ll outlive us all.’
Why did he taunt the prior like this? With an inward sigh, the abbot awarded himself a penance. It’s the man’s stubborn refusal to recognize his own limitations that brings out the worst in me, he thought,