The Sixth Lamentation

Chapter Forty-Nine

1

Anselm stood awkwardly facing Conroy on the forecourt to the Priory. His sabbatical was over. He’d finished his book and found a publisher with an appetite for trouble, and now the big man was heading back to Rome. After handing the manuscript over to his Order’s censors, he’d catch a flight home to São Paulo and his children.

They shook hands, Anselm wincing at the grip. Conroy compressed himself into the driving seat and wound down a window

‘I’ll wend my way so.

‘Come back.’

‘Sure, I’m taking something of the place with me.’

‘And you’re leaving something of you and your work behind.’

‘Pray for my kids.’

Anselm waved and the chariot of fire left Larkwood.

After Compline that night, when the Great Silence was under way, Father Andrew led Anselm out of the cloister and into the grounds, suggesting a walk.

They talked over all that had happened under a fading sky then idled down the bluebell path towards the Priory. The woods on either side lay deep in silence, restraining a cool, brooding presence. A solitary owl cried out somewhere near the lake.

‘Almost without exception, I misunderstood everything, said Anselm, his feet scuffing bracken and loose, dry twigs. ‘The list of misjudgements is too long to enumerate … all from prejudice, loose-thinking, fancy. But I’m not altogether sure Holy Mother Church helped me on my way.

Father Andrew stepped into the woods, foraging among the undergrowth. He re-emerged with a long quirky branch that must have fallen in the winds. The Prior smiled and swung the stick at the raised heads of winsome dandelions, a boyhood pastime that had come back in older years. He said, ‘She has a frail face, made up of the glorious and the twisted.’

Anselm said, ‘I still don’t know what Rome was really up to.

The Prior, harvesting, made a heavy, sweeping swish with his stick.

Anselm continued, ‘The Vatican had two reports about what happened at Les Moineaux, one of them, damning, from Chambray … the other, from Pleyon, apparently exculpatory — only it was never finished. So Rome couldn’t have known what Brionne would do when I found him and pushed him into court. He might have filled out the exculpation — which happened to be true … or he might have lied to protect himself. Either way, the face of the Church would have been saved. It’s not particularly inspiring.’

‘Like I said’ — the Prior looked around for something else to reap — ‘at times the face we love takes a turn, so much so that we might not recognise what we see. And yet, there is another explanation.’

‘Which is?’

‘Rome trusted the reputation of Pleyon over the words of Chambray’

Anselm frowned with concentration as the Prior continued, … and remember, they went to Chambray first, before they spoke to you, and he told them to get lost. His mind had been made up fifty years earlier.’

The Prior and his disciple slowed to a standstill. The owl, high now in the sky cried again. An early silver moon hung over the Priory in a weakening blue sky Anselm sat on the stump of a tree, cut down by Benedict and Jerome after the last year’s storms. The Prior, standing, looked at him directly and said, ‘And what about you?’

It was a typical question from him. It was so wide in compass that anything could be caught in its net. The Prior always threw such things when he had something specific in mind. Anselm said, ‘I lost myself, and I don’t know when it happened … I lost my hold on Larkwood.’

‘It usually happens that way’ said the Prior. ‘There’s rarely a signpost where the roads divide.’ He lopped a clump of ferns. ‘Have you found your way back?’

Anselm looked down the path to the monastery, barely discernible from the trees. ‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Good,’ said Father Andrew, delivering yet another whack.

The Prior, as was so often the case, seemed to see things not on view Anselm said, ‘I think in an obscure way I might have arrived’ — he had a sudden thought — ‘helped on my way by Salomon Lachaise … the scale of his suffering.’

The Prior rested both hands on his stick, looking quizzically at his son.

‘I can’t tell you the route. But I’ve arrived with something like … tears in my soul.’

The Prior’s gaze grew penetrating. Anselm said, ‘Millions died from hatred, beneath a blue sky like the one over Larkwood this afternoon … almost by chance, someone like Pascal is trodden underfoot like an ant, along with countless others. And yet, against that, the life of Agnes Embleton is resolved, as if there is a healing hand at work that cannot be deflected from its purpose. I just can’t make sense of it, other than to cry.

The Prior said, ‘You never will understand, fully; and in a way you mustn’t. If you do, you’ll be trotting out formulas. That will bring you very close to superstition. It can be comforting’ — he struck out at the air — ‘but it won’t last.’

Walking over to Anselm, the Prior thought for a while, leaning his back against a tree. His silver eyebrows, thick and untrimmed, for once looked incongruous on a face so devoid of guile. He said, ‘Those tears are part of what it is to be a monk. Out there, in the world, it can be very cold. It seems to be about luck, good and bad, and the distribution is absurd. We have to be candles, burning between hope and despair, faith and doubt, life and death, all the opposites. That is the disquieting place where people must always find us. And if our life means anything, if what we are goes beyond the monastery walls and does some good, it is that somehow, by being here, at peace, we help the world cope with what it cannot understand.’

Father Andrew touched Anselm’s shoulder and together they headed down the last quarter mile to the Priory. It had suddenly turned cold, and the glittering lights in the distant windows carried a summons to warmth. Their feet fell softly on the path. The evening light slipped further behind the trees and the moon grew strong. Slightly to the east was the lake, like a black pool, and out of sight the Old Foundry.

Anselm said, ‘Schwermann just stood there, before the world, saying he’d done something good among all the evil. He waved it in the air as if it were the winning number in the lottery, a ticket to absolution.’

Father Andrew replied, quietly ‘There might just have been a trace of love in it.’

‘Is that enough to redeem a man?’

‘God knows.’

‘It’s terrifying, but do you think a man could so blot out his own life that he can’t be saved?’

‘No, I don’t —’ he flung the branch into a pool of shadow — ‘but something frightens me far more. There might come a point where someone could choose hell rather than acknowledge fault and accept the forgiveness of God.’

They reached Larkwood Priory and the two monks pushed open the great gate, leaving the breathing woods to the coming night.

2

Lying in bed that night, waiting for Sailing By, Anselm involuntarily returned to his earlier reflections. He thought of Pascal and a brutal irony: an accidental consequence of his death was that Agnes was eventually reunited with her son. If Pascal hadn’t died, Victor might never have come forward to give evidence … if he hadn’t given any evidence, Anselm would never have discovered that Victor believed Agnes was dead … it was only when Victor realised she was alive that the whole truth came out …

And, going back further, if Pascal hadn’t died then Anselm would never have gone to France and mentioned the name of Agnes to Etienne Fougères as the butler poured the tea, and discovered that Etienne knew about her, and Robert, and that his family had kept a secret for fifty years … That jarred on him now, as it had jarred on him then, but suddenly Sailing By began.

Instantly Anselm was in the crow’s-nest of a great dipping schooner, high above the decks, with the scurrying crew in black and white below The spars creaked and groaned and the sails strained against their ropes. Sunlight flashed upon cerulean waves and in the distance thick green foliage burst from the pale sands of a small island. It was a vision that suggested itself every time the music came on and Anselm blissfully surrendered himself to its charms, shutting down the engine of his thinking. However, with his thoughts attuned to the past, a window to his mind was left ajar. Just before he sank beneath the waves he heard a small voice, a little idea. He woke, knocking his radio on to the floor in excitement. This was one thing he had got right.