Free The Breath of Peace by Penelope Wilcock Page A

entwined with hers across the table, and his eyes held hers briefly, then he looked down, and just waited. Madeleine did not move either, overwhelmed by the torrent of words and hardly knowing what to pick up of all that he had said. The silence between them grew less comfortable as every moment passed. Still he waited.
    â€˜I hardly know what to say,’ she responded in the end. ‘I had thought we were happy together. I can see we have a way to go before we finally shake down comfortably as man and wife, and know each other’s ways – but we were old to begin it, weren’t we? I didn’t know you hated being married to me. I didn’t know you thought me unkind, or that you dread coming home. I’m sorry about that. And I certainly didn’t intend you to think I was comparing you unfavourably with Brother Thomas. Do you regret it, then – that you married me?’
    He looked steadily into the bright challenge of her gaze. ‘I do not. I bless the day I married you. Now, then: what did you want to say to me?’
    â€˜Oh…’ She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’ll keep. We’ve sat here too long talking and there’s too much to be done. The days are short. It can wait until we sit down for a bite later on. Be off with you! And thank you for digging out the muck, William – it’s not a job you can have been looking forward to. And I must go and see if either of those birds has laid – I need an extra egg for what I wanted to make us for our dinner. There’s only one every other day at the moment, but we may be in luck. The morning’s running away with us. Let’s talk later.’
    William hesitated, uncertain about this, feeling that he had said too much and left too little space for Madeleine. He suspected that if he said so, it might seed another argument. So he nodded in acceptance of what she said, and turned to the work awaiting his attention.
    As he carried and stacked wood, and sweated over the labour of digging out the heap of night soil that fell from the longdrop closet built out from their chamber, William turned over in his mind the antagonisms of the morning. The time after they had woken and before they got up to see to the animals, the time they met up to eat at midday, and the evenings when they sat together at the fireside were their occasions for conversation. Through the mornings and afternoons of the day they were often engaged on separate chores – or, if they were working together, so fully involved with the task in hand that it occupied their minds completely. In monastic life, the Grand Silence extended past the community breaking its fast, and meals were taken in silence, listening to the reading of the martyrology. All the naturally arising domestic opportunities for conversation blocked. He reflected ruefully that Benedict of Nursia certainly understood about the propensity of human beings for falling out with one another. The only way to prevent it was to stop them talking altogether, it seemed.
    A sudden change in the breeze wafted the stench of human manure into William’s face, and he turned aside, retching. This task disgusted him almost beyond bearing. He didn’t mind the dung of the goat and the horse, for they fed on hay and leaves, roots and grain, and the smell of what left them was not offensive. But the excrement of meat-fed human beings, and that of the pigs that ate the meat scraps from the human table, turned his stomach over with its putrefaction and hideous rottenness. For a moment he stood quite still, pressing the back of his hand against his mouth, swallowing back the saliva that rose in preparation for vomiting, bringing the instincts of his body back under the control of his mind.
    As he took the handcart with its vile but precious load through the herb and vegetable gardens Madeleine had planned and he had dug, mostly bare now in this season when the earth lay banded