With what joy, a few days later, the monks of Beaulieu learned that their abbot had returned and that, so far as he knew, there were no plans for him to depart from them again in the foreseeable future.
Brother Adam, too, was glad. His only concern was lest the abbot, out of a now mistaken sense of kindness, should decide to relieve him of his duties at the granges. He had prepared for this carefully, however. His record was excellent. It would take anyone else a year to learn what he now knew. Who else would want the job? For the good of the abbey he should certainly keep it another year or two. All in all, he hoped he was well prepared.
As for his guilty secret, he had learned to get through the offices now without the terror of giving himself away. He had already, he confessed to himself, become hardened in his sin. He was just glad the abbot knew nothing, that was all.
When he received a summons to present himself before the abbot and the prior one morning he was prepared for everything except what awaited him.
The abbot looked friendly, if somewhat thoughtful, when he entered. Grockleton was sitting there, leaning forward with his claw on the table as usual. But Adam was too glad to be looking at the abbot again to take much notice of the prior. And it was the abbot, not Grockleton, who spoke. ‘Now, Adam, we know all about your love affair with Mary Furzey. Fortunately neither her husband nor the brethren in the abbey do. So I’d just like you to tell us about it in your own words.’
Grockleton had wanted to ask him whether he had anything to confess and give him the chance to perjure himself, but the abbot had overruled him.
It did not take long. If his humiliation was complete, the abbot did nothing to prolong it. ‘This will remain a secret,’ he told Adam, ‘for the sake of the abbey and, I may add, for that of the woman and her family. You must leave here at once. Today. But I want no one to know why.’
‘Where am I to go?’
‘I’m sending you to our daughter house down in Devon. To Newenham. Nobody will think that strange. They’ve been struggling a bit down there and you are – or were – one of our best monks.’
Adam bowed his head. ‘May I say farewell to Mary Furzey?’
‘Certainly not. You are to have no communication with her whatsoever.’
‘I am surprised’ – it was Grockleton now, he couldn’t resist it – ‘that you should even think of such a thing.’
‘Well.’ Adam sighed. Then he looked at Grockleton sadly, though without malice. ‘You have never done such a thing.’
There was silence in the room. The claw did not move. Perhaps the prior might have stooped forward a little lower over the dark old table. The abbot’s face was a mask as he gazed carefully into the middle distance. So Brother Adam did not guess that in the abbot’s secret book there was a notation concerning John of Grockleton and a woman, and a child. But that had been in another monastery, far away in the north, a long time ago.
After he had gone the abbot asked: ‘He doesn’t know she’s pregnant, does he?’
‘No.’
‘Better he shouldn’t.’
‘Quite.’ Grockleton nodded.
‘Oh dear.’ The abbot sighed. ‘We are none of us safe from falling, as you know,’ he added meaningfully.
‘I know.’
‘I want him given two pairs of new shoes,’ the abbot added firmly, ‘before he goes.’
It was not quite noon when Brother Adam and John of Grockleton, accompanied by one lay brother, rode slowly out of the abbey and up the track that led to Beaulieu Heath.
As he rode, Adam noticed the small trees that crowned the slope opposite the abbey. The salt sea breeze from the south-west had not bent them, but shaped the tops so that they all looked as if they had been shaved down that side; and they flowered towards the north-east. It was a common sight in the coastal parts of the Forest.
White clouds were scudding over the tranquil, sunlit abbey behind them and, as they crested the little ridge, Adam felt the sharp salt breeze full upon his face.
Brother Luke returned quietly to St Leonards Grange a week later. His case did not come up before the justice at the Michaelmas court.
At about the time of the court, Mary told her husband that he might be going to be a father again.
‘Oh.’ He frowned, then grinned, a little puzzled. ‘That was a lucky one.’
‘I know.’ She shrugged. ‘These things happen.’
He might have thought about it more, except that, a short time later, John Pride – who had suffered two hours of his brother Luke’s urging – turned up to suggest that their quarrel should be over. With him he brought the pony.
1300
On a December afternoon, when a yellow wintry sun, low on the horizon, was sending its parting rays across the frozen landscape of Beaulieu Heath, which was covered in snow, two riders, muffled against the cold, made their way slowly eastwards towards the abbey.
The snow had fallen days before; and right across the heath, now, there was a thin layer of icy crust, which broke as the horses’ hoofs stepped on it. A light, chill breeze came from the east, sweeping little particles of snow and ice dust across the surface. The branches of the snow-covered bushes cast long shadows, fingering eastwards towards Beaulieu.
Five years had passed since Brother Adam had left the abbey to go down to the bleak little daughter house of Newenham, so far along the western coast – five years with only a dozen other brothers in the little wilderness. It might have seemed a cheerless scene that greeted him now, this icy landscape lit by the sulphurous yellow glow of a falling winter sun, but he was not aware of it. He was only aware, as if by a homing instinct, that the grey buildings by the river lay less than an hour away.
It is a curious fact, never fully explained, that at around this time in history a number of the monks belonging to the little house of Newenham in Devon started suffering from a particular affliction. The abbey records of Beaulieu make this very clear, but whether it was the water, the diet, something in the earth or the buildings themselves, nobody has ever been able to discover. Several, however, suffered so acutely that there was nothing to do for them but bring them back to Beaulieu where they could be looked after.
This was what had happened to Brother Adam. He was unaware of the yellowish light around him because he was blind.
It was often remarked with wonder by the monks of Beaulieu, from that time on, how Brother Adam could find his way about unaided. Not only in the cloister. Even in the middle of the night, when the monks came down the passageway and the stairs to perform the night office in the church, he would walk down with them quite unaided and turn into his choir stall at exactly the right place. Outside, too, he would pace about in the abbey precincts without, it seemed, ever getting lost.
He seemed to find all manner of tasks he could perform without the use of his eyes, from planting vegetables to making candles.
He was still a handsome, well-made man. He conversed little and liked to be alone, but there was always about him an air of quiet serenity.
Only once, for a matter of a few days some eighteen months after his return, did something occur within him that seemed to distract his mind. Several times he became lost, or bumped into things. After a week, during which the abbot was rather worried about him, he seemed to recover his equanimity and balance, and never bumped into anything again. No one knew why this brief interlude had occurred. Except Brother Luke.
It had been a warm summer afternoon when the lay brother had offered to escort him along his favourite path down along the river.
‘I shall not see the river, but I shall smell it,’ Adam had replied. ‘By all means, then.’
It had been necessary, in this instance, for Luke to take his arm, but with an occasional warning about any small obstacles along the path, they had been able to stride along quite easily through the woods, emerging finally on to the open marsh by the river bend where, to his delight, the monk had heard the sound of a party of swans, rising off the water on the wing.
And they had been standing in the afternoon silence for a little while, feeling the sun on their faces very pleasantly, when Brother Adam heard light footsteps on the path. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked Luke.
‘Someone to see you,’ the lay brother replied. ‘I’m walking off a little way now,’ he added. And it was with a slight shock of surprise, a moment or two later, that Adam realized who it must be.
She was standing in front of him. He could smell her. He was, as only the blind can be, aware of her whole presence. He wanted to reach out to touch her, but hesitated. It seemed to him that she was not alone.
‘Brother Adam.’ Her voice. She spoke calmly, softly. ‘I have brought someone to see you.’
‘Oh. Who is that?’
‘My youngest child. A little boy.’
‘I see.’
‘Will you give him your blessing?’
‘My blessing?’ He was almost surprised. It was a natural thing to ask of a monk, but, knowing what she did about him … ‘For what my blessing is worth,’ he said. ‘How old is the boy?’
‘He is five.’
‘Ah. A nice age.’ He smiled. ‘His name?’
‘I called him Adam.’
‘Oh. My name.’
He felt her move very close, her body almost touching, but so that she could whisper, close in his ear. ‘He is your son.’
‘My son?’ The revelation hit him so that he almost staggered back. It was as if, in his world of darkness, there had been a great flash of golden light.
‘He doesn’t know.’
‘You …’ His voice was hoarse. ‘You are sure?’
‘Yes.’ She was standing back now.
For a moment he stood there in the sunlight, quite still, though he felt as if he might be swaying. ‘Come, little Adam,’ he said quietly. And when the small boy approached, he reached down with his hands and felt his head, then his face. He would have liked to lift him, feel him, press him to him. But he could not do this. ‘So, Adam,’ he said gently, ‘be a good boy, do as your mother tells you and accept another Adam’s blessing.’ Resting his hand on the boy’s head, he recited a brief prayer.
He wanted so much to give the boy something. He wondered what. Then, suddenly remembering, he drew out the cedarwood crucifix that, so long ago, his mother had given him and, with a single pull, broke the leather string that secured it round his neck and handed it to the boy. ‘My mother gave me this, Adam,’ he said. ‘They say a crusader brought it from the Holy Land. Keep it always.’ He turned to Mary with a shrug. ‘It is all that I have.’
They went, then, and soon afterwards he and Luke made their way back towards the abbey.
They did not speak, except once, halfway along the path through the woods.
‘Does the boy look like me?’
‘Yes.’
Of all the times, during the long years of his blind existence, it was on those sunny afternoons as he sat quietly meditating in the carrels in the sheltered north wall of the abbey cloister, that Brother Adam appeared most serene. It seemed to the younger monks that, being obviously very close to God, Brother Adam was in a silent communion that it would be impious to interrupt. And sometimes he was. But sometimes, also, as he smelled the grass and the daisies in the cloister, and felt the warm sun coming from over the frater, it was another thought that filled his mind with a joy and delight which, if it led him down even to perdition, he could not help.
I have a son. Dear God, I have a son.
One afternoon, when he was all alone with no one to see, he even took out a small knife he had been using earlier in the day, and discreetly carved a little letter ‘A’ in the stone beside him.
‘A’ for Adam. And sometimes, he thought, if his punishment was to be cast out of God’s garden into some darker place, then still, perhaps, for the sake of his son, he would do it all again.
So, for many years, Brother Adam lived with his secret, in the abbey of Beaulieu.
LYMINGTON
1480
Friday. Fish market day in Lymington. On Wednesdays and Fridays, at eight o’clock in the morning, for one hour, the fishermen set out their stalls.
A warm early April morning. The smell of fresh fish was delicious. Many of them had been landed down at the little wharf that dawn. There were eels and oysters from the estuary; hake, cod and other white fish from the sea; there were goldfish also, as they called the yellow gurnard then. Most of the women in the small borough went to the fish market: the merchants’ wives in their big-sleeved gowns with wimples covering their heads, the poorer sorts and the servants, some in back-laced bodices, all with aprons and little hoods on their heads to make them look respectable.
The bailiff had just rung a bell to close the market as, from the direction of the wharf, two figures appeared.
Even a glance, as the lean figure made his way up the street that warm April morning, and you felt you knew him. It was just the way he walked. It was so obvious he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. The loose linen leggings he favoured flapped cheerfully on his calves, leaving his bare ankles exposed. On his feet he wore only sandals secured with leather thongs. His jerkin was made of ray – striped cloth – blue and yellow, none too clean. On his head was a leather cap he had stitched together himself.
Young Jonathan Totton could not remember ever seeing Alan Seagull without this item of headgear.
If Alan Seagull’s cheerful face took a short cut from his mouth to his chest, if his sparse black beard went from his mouth down to his Adam’s apple pretty much without pausing for such an ornament as a chin, you could be sure it was because he and his forebears had reckoned they could do perfectly well without one. And there was something about his cheerful, canny grin that told you they were right. ‘We’ve cut a corner, there,’ the Seagull smile seemed to say about their chin, ‘and we could probably cut a few more too, that you don’t need to know about.’
He smelled of tar and of fish, and of the salty sea. As he often did, he was humming a tune. Young Jonathan Totton was enchanted by him and, walking proudly beside the mariner, he had just reached the point on the sloping street where the squat little town hall stood when a voice, calm but authoritative, summoned him: ‘Jonathan. Come here.’
Regretfully, he left Seagull’s side and went over to the tall-gabled timbered house outside which his father was standing.
A moment later, with the older man’s hand resting on his shoulder, he found himself inside and listening to his father’s quiet voice. ‘I should prefer, Jonathan, that you should not spend so much time with that man.’
‘Why, Father?’
‘Because there is better company to keep in Lymington.’
Now that, Jonathan thought, was going to be a problem.
Lymington, lying as it did by the mouth of the river that ran down from Brockenhurst and Boldre to the sea, was geographically at the centre of the Forest’s coastline – although, strictly speaking, on its small wedge of coastal farmland and marsh, it had not been included in the legal jurisdiction of the Conqueror’s hunting forest.
It was a thriving little harbour town nowadays. From the cluster of boathouses, stores and fishermen’s cottages down by the small quay, the broad High Street ran up quite a steep slope fronted by two-storey timber-and-plaster houses with overhanging upper floors and gabled roofs. The town hall at the crest of the hill on the left-hand side, typical of its kind at that date, was built of stone and consisted of a small dark chamber surrounded by open arches in which various sellers offered their wares; above which, reached by an outside staircase, a spacious overhanging penthouse served as a courtroom for discussing the town’s affairs. In front of the town hall stood the town cross; across the street, the Angel Inn. About two hundred yards further along the crest of the slope, a church marked the end of the borough. There were two other streets, at right angles, a church, a market cross – for Lymington had the right to hold an annual three-day fair each September. There was a stocks and a tiny prison house for malefa
ctors, a ducking-stool and whipping post. There was a town well: all this to serve a community of, perhaps, four hundred souls.
From the High Street you could look down over the wharf and the little estuary water to the high slope of the river bank beyond. From behind the town hall, you could see the long line of the Isle of Wight on the other side of the Solent.
This was the Lymington that contained better company than Alan Seagull.
It was hard to say when Lymington had first begun. Four centuries before, when the Conqueror’s clerks had compiled his Domesday Book, they had recorded the little settlement near the coast known now as Old Lymington, with land for just one plough, four acres of meadow and inhabitants to the number of six families and a couple of slaves.
Technically, small though it was, Lymington was a manor held along with many others, by a succession of feudal lords who first began to develop the place. Its original use, as far as they were concerned, was as a harbour from which boats could cross the narrow straits to the lands they also held on the Isle of Wight. Even this choice was not inevitable. The feudal lords also held the manor of Christchurch where, soon after the death of Rufus, they had built a pleasant castle beside the new priory and the shallow harbour. At first sight that seemed the natural port. The trouble was, however, that between Christchurch and the Isle of Wight there were some awkward shoals and currents to navigate, whereas the approach to the Lymington hamlet was discovered to have a deep and easy channel.
‘The crossing’s shorter, too,’ they observed. So Lymington it was.
It was still only a hamlet; but around 1200 the manor lord had taken a further step. Between the hamlet and the river, on an area of sloping ground, he had laid out a single dirt street with thirty-four modest plots beside it. Fishermen, mariners and even traders, like the Tottons, from other local ports were encouraged to come and settle there. And to induce them still further, the development, known as New Lymington, was given a new status.