Read Aelred's Sin for Free Online Page B

special. He was the best and brought out the best in others.’
    ‘But he was your friend? Your special friend, was he?’
    ‘Yes, he was my friend.’
    ‘And you gave that up too? You left him with your sunsets?’
    ‘Yes. I gave him up.’ As he spoke, he thought he feltTed’s boots pinching his toes. ‘These are his boots.’ They both looked down at the black boots. ‘It’s a secret. Can you keep it? Is that OK, you think, to have them?’ ‘Let no one presume to give or receive anything without the Abbot’s leave, or to have anything as his own, anything whatever, whether book or tablets or pen or whatever it may be; for monks should not have even their own bodies and wills at their own disposal.’ That was the Rule.
    ‘Oh, yes, I’ll keep your secret. If you’ll tell me more. But we must go.’
    The Abbot and prior were preparing to go into Compline. The community was forming a procession out of the chapter house.
    That was it, Aelred thought: he made him feel special. Then he thought of Ted. In the darkness of the choir he felt the tears rolling down his cheeks. He pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose.
    The acolyte of the choir asked for the blessing, bowing in front of the Abbot and then standing in the middle of the choir. He read the lesson: ‘Fratres …’ ‘Brothers, be sober and watch, because your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour… Resist him…’
     
    The next day, as Aelred looked out on to the fields while the mist of dawn was lifting, he waited for the bell to announce the Conventual Mass. He saw that the snow was indeed melting and the grass was lucent beneath a light film of ice. Where there was a sun catch, there was a patch of fresh green grass. It would be spring again. All this was a kind of miracle, this change of seasons, an entirely new experience which seemed to grow instantly in him. But atthe same time, his head was filled with Benedict, not because of anything that Benedict had particularly said, but because of a vast multitude of things which being with Benedict, and talking with him, had made him feel, especially telling about Ted. So there was comfort in his homesickness, and he found that it disappeared with the coming of the spring and with his feelings for Benedict.
    There was a growing desire to see and be with Benedict, but this was not going to be possible. Benedict had already taught him all there was to know. The other customs he would pick up from the other novices, or be told by the novice master. He would have to lose his guardian angel.

The Guest House:
24 September 1984

    Already now the shades of mist are thinning
And dawn is rising from the skies…
    Lauds, praise! I pick my way in the darkness around the cloister, up early like a good cocoa planter. The temperature can drop even in the valleys around Malgretoute.
    In the silence, the bare stone, the arch of the sanctuary reaches and curves. The round solid pillars support space. The church is central to this complex, this monastery. An enclosure wall holds all in: workshops, farm, chapter house, scriptorium (library), refectory, cloister, cemetery, gardens. Silence. These men move quietly, businesslike, happy, smiling: like the men I had as teachers at school. What were they up to that I didn’t know about? Once or twice we joked about a couple of them.
    Take care Dom Michael in Maths, boy. He like to touch you up.
    A rough cowl scrapes the worn and polished stone. A hooded man, bowed, walks near the wall. I think I see my religious brother, then I don’t.
    I am learning about this life, about this ritual. From so young, J. M. knew it all. There was the fervour since that first dawn going down to the abbey church and hearing the Gregorian chant. It took away his homesickness during his first week at boarding school. There was that fervour and then there was Ted. When I was very small I saw something. I’m not sure, now. I put it out of my