Valley of Dry Bones

Chapter Seventeen

The early morning light dancing on the pond did not bring the usual joy to Thomas. He was too weary to feel anything except the weight of fatigue, and his eyes burned as if dusted with grit.

Terrified by his reaction to his visitor last night, he had slept little. At least his flesh had calmed with the sleepless hours. He yawned.

With eyelids half closed, he looked over at Simon.

The young man was sitting on the bank, gazing at the stream flowing toward the priory mill, and peeling the bark off a broken limb.

Once admitted to the hermitage, Simon had eaten and drunk with fine appetite without expressing any appreciation for the hospitality. After kneeling at the small altar, he accepted the offer to take Thomas’ bed, again with no thanks, and slept deeply all night. The monk lay down on his rough bench to endure the dark hours until dawn.

A discourteous heart belies the boy’s beautiful face, Thomas said to himself. With relief, he realized Simon no longer tempted him. Now he grew impatient to send the lad on his way. “When you arrived, you told me you were in search of understanding, my son,” he called out. “You have said nothing more of this longing since yesterday.”

Simon ran his fingernail down the moist and tender wood, gouged a hole in it, and then tossed it aside.

“If I knew what troubles you, I could offer direction, if not answers.” There was something about this visit that unsettled Thomas, apart from his brief lust and the intrusion on his solitude. If only his mind were not so dulled by lack of sleep. He could not grasp the reason.

“I thought holy men could read souls.”

Even though the words were insolent, Thomas chose not to reply in kind. Despite Simon’s tone, the furrows cutting into the youth’s forehead did suggest honest concern. “If you seek a saint, you had best travel elsewhere” the monk said at last. “My sins stink like those of other men. Whatever advice I offer comes from mortal failure, not sanctity.”

Simon looked oddly relieved. “I am grateful for those words,” he said. “I feared my grave faults would horrify you.”

“Cruelty does,” the monk replied. “Little else.”

Simon fell silent, picked up a rock, and skipped it across the flowing stream. “What is cruelty?” He did not look at Thomas as he spoke.

“What have you done to ask that question?”

He answered with a shrug.

“Lain with a woman against her will?” That suggestion was an easy enough presumption considering the boy’s youth, the monk thought.

“You do understand a soul’s secrets!” Simon picked up another rock, this time hurling it at a shrub from which an invisible bird chirped. “Your question does contain a false assertion. Women may claim they resist and thus remain innocent of what a man does, but Satan blinds them to the truth. It is their nature to seduce men into sinning. It is they who destroy our will to be virtuous and we who are unfairly abused.”

“Some might agree with you, although that contention is flawed. Are there not laws against rape? The fact suggests some women may be forced into forbidden copulation by men.”

Simon looked uneasy. “I have swyved virgins. Base-born wenches only. One did howl like a bitch afterward, claiming she had been unwilling. She lied.”

“No matter the truth, your lust was sinful. Have you done penance?”

“I am here, am I not?”

Thomas struggled not to show his annoyance. My peace has been disrupted, he thought, shattered to no purpose. This ungracious creature suffers no agony of guilt. He has come solely for the sake of appearance. “Have you made retribution for all the maidenheads you have broken?” he snapped.

“None were virgins of rank.” Simon tossed another rock. This one sank the moment it hit the water.

Clenching his fist over Simon’s lack of concern for any injury he might have inflicted, Thomas longed to chastise the young man. Instead, he fell silent, wondering if he had been any more virtuous than this youth. Before he came to Tyndal Priory, he had cared little enough about the women with whom he had lain in London inns. Surely he dare not admonish when he had committed the same transgressions.

None of the women had been virgins, however, and he never forced the unwilling. Surrendering to lust might be sinful for both, but he had tried to give pleasure in return for the relief each woman gave him. When he suggested to a priest that he had done this out of gratitude, the man claimed his intended consideration had been perverted by the wickedness of the act itself.

Sin or not, he had meant to be kind. From the disregard too evident in Simon’s tone, Thomas realized that the young man had not cared at all if the girls had bled without any joy.

Simon leapt to his feet, his hands stretched out in supplication. “Do you not understand? Women are like Eden’s serpent, tempting me to suffer unbearably from lust. After my seed releases, I draw back from them in horror. I am befouled by their reptilian slime. I hear Satan laugh while I weep, knowing how these creatures have corrupted me.”

“We are all born of woman,” Thomas said, trying to calm him with reason. “Even our Lord.”

Simon stiffened. “His mother was a virgin who conceived without sin.”

“Your own mother…”

“There can be no comparison. I may show her honor, a son’s duty, but the woman who bore me was cursed with Eve’s pain and remains imbued with the imperfections of her sex.”

Realizing that the defense of women, even based on the Virgin, would fail, Thomas turned to a more practical matter. “Must you father sons?”

“Only if my lands are restored,” Simon replied, briefly telling his father’s tale and the curse of his name. “My mother hopes to win back my title through service with Queen Eleanor. In this way, she proves the irrational nature of her sex. I see no probability of success.” He spat. “No woman can restore a man’s honor. He must do it himself or he is no man.”

“Since you doubt you will ever recover what your father lost, then turn your back on worldly rank and vow yourself to God’s service. If lust, even within marriage, offends you, find joy in the struggle for chastity.”

“That was your path. Did lust trouble you so little that such a choice was easy? Were there no pleasures for you in the world at all?”

Thomas froze.

“I long for adventure,” Simon continued without waiting for any answer. “If I had a horse and armor, I would leave this land.” He raised his fist. “Fight for glory in tournaments.” For a moment, he hesitated, and then his eyes brightened. “Go on crusade! I could serve God by killing infidels during the day and share tales of great deeds with other men at night. Might that not solve my difficulty? If I could find a man to pay for my needs, I would kill the ungodly on behalf of my benefactor’s soul as well as my own.”

Thomas was so amazed by this sudden turn from lust to killing that he was rendered speechless. Then he heard a sound on the path leading down from his hut, looked up, and breathed a sigh of relief. A friend was about to save him from what had become a most uncomfortable discussion.

“Crowner Ralf comes to join us,” he said. “He is Sir Fulke’s youngest brother and would have better advice than I on matters of war.”

It was Simon’s turn to look discomfited. “Methinks God has just whispered in my ear,” he said, his voice rough with evident fear. He watched as the crowner pushed his way through thick branches. “Do not mention me, if you would be so kind. I cannot talk to the sheriff’s brother now. God demands I pray by myself for awhile until He gives me leave to stop. Forgive me.”

With those words, the youth ran like a terrified deer and disappeared into the brush edging the stream bank.