The Beautiful Thread by Penelope Wilcock

believe she is well enough settled. You’ll meet her husband. He’s also here to help with this wedding. He’s called William. He… well… perhaps I’d better leave it there. He’s a dependable man; I can trust him to look after Madeleine. But it’s the same as with you – she couldn’t come with him because they have chickens and geese, a goat and a garden. They used to keep pigs, but not now I believe.”
    And so they talked easily about homely, family things, and the life Rose sketched out for John reminded him of his childhood, the way he grew up. He felt comfortable with her, his eyes resting on the soft contours of her face, rosy cheeks, dark eyes, dark hair streaked through with silver like his sister’s, stray wisps of it escaping from the linen cap she wore and curling softly against her neck. Her hands, plump like the rest of her, brown from the sun and very clean, rested peacefully in her lap as she chatted. She dressed modestly, he noted – her cap, her kerchief folded over her breast and taken round to tie behind her – and he liked that. She had, he thought, an odd combination of quietness and vivacity, so that her presence felt calm but sparkled with the same inherent joy and zest for life as he felt in her son. He found himself telling her things that normally felt insignificant, too inconsequential to say; and she listened, her eyes alive with interest, her mouth almost curving in a smile always ready.
    When Tom and Conradus returned from the kitchen, she tasted appreciatively the soft honey cakes and crisp little pastries her son set before her with pride, and gratefully sipped the camomile tea Brother Tom poured her. She listened carefully as they explained what was needed of her in helping with the wedding preparations, and that for this short time she would by special permission be allowed to work within the cloister. She thought about this. “That is a privilege indeed,” she said, “and to work alongside my son again is a precious gift I had not looked for. But… the only thing… sometimes, Father John, when I’m cooking – I just can’t help it – I do start to sing. Because I feel happy. But maybe that would be out of keeping here. Unseemly. Only I think it might just happen. Even within the cloister.”
    She looked up, concerned, into his laughing eyes. “Oh, Rose, thank God you’ve come!” he said. Somehow, everything about her set the bishop and the Bonvallets and the whole struggling endeavour of trying to live up to the status of the abbacy into better perspective. It unaccountably faded away. They’d only just met, but he felt as though he’d known her forever.

Chapter
Three
    T hey walked through the apple orchard, the trees laden with pink and white blossom, to the infirmary, where Rose especially wanted to see the physic garden. As they strolled along, they talked about healing herbs, and Rose’s knowledge delighted John. Some of what came out in their conversation was familiar to him already – lettuce as a sovereign remedy for heartburn, the dangling flowers of the nettle as a wonderful spring tonic – but other snippets about winter aconite for tumours and flowers of hawthorn to strengthen the heart, were new to him. She surveyed the beautifully tended knot-garden full of the infirmary’s medicinal plants, her eyes bright with pleasure. She walked among the herbs, bending to touch and to sniff the clean, robust bouquet of aromatic scents.
    Rose thought her son had it right – you really could tell this man anything. His manner was so understanding, so warm and kind. Besides, she felt so free and at peace in his company – a man of God, vowed to the monastic way of simplicity and holiness. She felt less cautious and guarded than she would ordinarily be with a man. Even now in middle life, her hair turning grey and her waist expanding, she took care to