Free Remember Me by Penelope Wilcock

his left eye; the effect was decidedly macabre. Taken all round, he looked dreadful.
    â€œI am so very, very sorry,” said William. “I should never have spoken to you as I did. Please will you forgive me?” He spoke with such humility and contrition that Conradus was even further astounded.
    The young man blinked, recollected himself sufficiently to close his mouth, swallowed, and said, “Think nothing of it. I’m sorry to have put my foot in it as I did.”
    He knew that monastic apologies and absolutions were not supposed to go like this. There was a form, a ritual, and every brother should stick to it, but he could see this would not be the moment to insist upon it.
    William nodded. A brave gleam of something suggestive of a smile warmed his features, but not very much. He half turned to go, then hesitated and turned back. “Please—you won’t…”
    â€œNo,” Conradus reassured him. “No, I won’t.”
    But though he would not have dreamed of telling of what he had seen, as a juicy tidbit of gossip, the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that he ought to make sure their abbot knew all was not well with Father William’s soul. He did not act on this instinct immediately. He knew well enough how a secret burns and tries the doors to be let out. He kept it to himself for another ten days, doing every little thing he could think of in the meanwhile to bring comfort to Father William—but with notable lack of success. Then when Father Theodore took the novices through the chapters of the Rule laying down the monastic duty of confiding all things to the abbot in absolute trust and without reserve, Brother Conradus knew where his duty lay.
    As Conradus stood the closest he could get to the other side of John’s table, gazing at him urgently, Abbot John reflected that this young man’s dark eyes were very compelling.
    He leaned back in his chair, putting down his pen, to listen to what the novice had to say.
    â€œIt’s Father William,” said Brother Conradus.
    â€œOh? What now?” John waited with a certain amount of apprehension for what fresh revelation there might be.
    â€œI believe … ” Conradus fixed his abbot with the trusting, ardent fervency of his eyes, “ … that he is very unhappy!”
    On the receiving end of the unconscious melodrama in the short, plump young man’s voice, in the earnest solicitude in his eyes, in his sense of complete involvement with the distress he had detected, John was appalled to find that he wanted to laugh. It was not that William’s struggle didn’t matter to him; he was acutely aware of it, and not a day passed without him praying for William and usually reappraising his own pastoral management of the situation, asking himself if he had done as he should and all he could. What activated his sense of the ridiculous was the young man’s fervid engrossment that struck John as more than a little sensationalist and out of proportion. It had not escaped his attention that William had lost the joy that had briefly illumined him, but John, having little to do with him in these last few weeks, had seen him only return to his habitual appearance of dry, ironic detachment. Manfully holding down the rising wave of mirth that having been triggered threatened to get out of hand, he defused the vibrancy of energy by reaching for the rag to clean his pen and moving it to a different place on the table.
    â€œYes,” he replied, unable to look at Conradus, “he does have a rather doleful cast of countenance at times, doesn’t he?” With considerable effort, John kept his face straight, but his voice shook.
    â€œNo!” John felt the combined force of Brother Conradus’s depth of compassion and powerful sense of duty converging upon him. “I mean, really unhappy. The sort of unhappiness even food cannot touch. Father, in this last month