a new day, soon with new things to do
Nov. 11th, 2014 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieBrother Peire doesn’t dream this time, and he doesn’t wake until Rainaut is shaking his shoulder and telling him to get up, it’s time for the dawn service and then the beginning of their day.
Rainaut opens the window so he can push the shutter open as well, so light can get into the room. The sun is still rising so there isn't much light, but it's enough for Brother Peire to see that there's a basin of water on the stool and now that he's opened the window, Rainaut can splash water on his face and wipe it off with the hem of his shirt.
Brother Peire could probably say a lot of things, but what comes out of his mouth is "You don't have a towel?" And Rainaut laughs.
"Good morning to you too, friar," he says, grinning. His expression sobers and he adds "I'm sorry, you probably don't want to be reminded. Good morning, Peire. Wash your face and we'll go."
Brother Peire gets out of bed, stretches, splashes water on his face. It's cold, the water, but that at least is something he's used to. He doesn't want to dry himself on his robe – they had towels at the friary, scratchy as they were, and he was taught respect for his very few belongings, even though as a friar the only things he really owned were his robe, his sandals, a pair of shoes for cold and snowy weather, and an eight-rayed sun pendant, the symbol of the Mother Church, on a leather cord. The Gray Friars even took that from him, when they made him renounce his vows (although in his heart he hasn't renounced anything), along with the gray robe that marked him as one of them. Many lay people wear a sun, not just monks and friars and holy men, so they could have let him keep his, but the Gray Friars made him leave under suspicion of heresy, and accused heretics are not allowed to have one.
They still wear them, sometimes, as a cover, or so Brother Peire was told. When one is looking for heretics, one can't always count on what they do or do not wear.
Brother Peire doesn't remember seeing anyone last night with a sun pendant, but to be fair he wasn't looking, and people sometimes wear theirs under their clothes. Rainaut doesn't wear one.
He misses it.
He puts on his sandals and follows Rainaut out of the cell, around the cloister, and into the church. The light behind the round window over the altar comes through in red and yellow and blue and green, the colors growing brighter and stronger as the sun rises. The same woman who led both services last night leads this one, and as with those services, there are things Brother Peire recognizes and things that are completely unfamiliar, and most disconcertingly, things that are so close to what he knows, until the congregation gets to a different word or goes off into a different tune.
The dawn service seems to be mostly songs of praise and gratitude, and appeals to God's mercy for a productive and holy day. The sentiment is something he knows well, even if the form it takes isn't.
Back in Montagui, his brother friars are chanting almost the same chants, singing almost the same songs, standing shoulder to shoulder in worship. The chapel is full of men in gray, voices lifted up to God.
Rainaut squeezes his hand.
I can't do this, Brother Peire thinks. Please, Lord, give me strength. Do not forsake me.
"Now breakfast," Rainaut tells him in an undertone, after the service is concluded and people stand and start filing out. "And then the morning meeting, and then we meet with the Council to find a place for you."
Brother Peire can't say that his place is in Montagui, in the Gray Friars' house. He can't say it, but he wants to.
Breakfast is bread and honey and milk and dried fruit, plates and pitchers traveling up and down the long tables in the refectory just as they did last night. He tries to listen to the hum of conversation around him, people apparently talking about their dreams or their work for the day or each other or things he can't make out. Rainaut chats with the person on his other side, and the people across the table, and the woman on the other side of Brother Peire asks how he slept but all he can tell her is that he did.
"Was it strange to sleep in your own cell?" she asks. "Don't friars share a dormitory? There's a bed in our dormitory if you'll be more comfortable there, but try not to sleep next to Sengrat – he snores."
"Rainaut slept with me," Brother Peire says. "On the floor, I mean" - because the woman raises an eyebrow - "so I wasn't completely alone."
"He's a good man. We heard how you visited him in prison. That was very kind of you."
"I was curious. I wanted to know how he could forsake the Mother Church for heresy. Brother Abbot gave me permission. And I, I liked talking to him. We became friends." It's much easier to talk about Rainaut than it is to talk about his life as a friar.
"I'm called Amada," she says. "Rainaut did right to bring you here. We practice love and joy and charity. Oh, not that your friars don't – I was always taught that a friar's mission is one of charity and humility and prayer, but there wasn't a chapter where I grew up, so I never knew any friars myself – but we aren't subject to the whims of your church, we rule ourselves, we don't owe anything to any governing body. The council only serves for a year, and then we vote a new one. Even the leaders of the services, they do it for a week and then someone else has a turn."
"Amada," Rainaut says, leaning around Brother Peire, "don't scare him."
"I'm not. You're not scared off, are you?" she asks Brother Peire.
"I don't think it matters," he says. "I don't, I mean, I can't, I can't – I can't go home."
"Oh." Her face falls. She's pretty, with green eyes and freckles and light brown hair braided around her head, and if Brother Peire were to pass her in the street he'd think she was someone for whom God had shown favor. But she's an apostate. "I knew that, I'm so sorry. Most people come here of their own free will. They just walk out of their lives and come here because they'd rather be here. I think Rostans is the only one who came because he didn't have anywhere to go. He was a weaver. His guild kicked him out and his wife had their marriage annulled."
"Amada," Rainaut says, more sternly this time. "Gossip."
"It isn't gossip, it's fact. You can ask him," she tells Brother Peire. "Rostans. He'll tell you. It's not as if it's a big secret." She bites into a dried apricot with an encouraging look. Brother Peire wonders if she's going to find him later and want to know if he talked to Rostans yet. He hopes not.
"I'll introduce you to him later, if you want," Rainaut says to Brother Peire, who just shakes his head. This is the most conversation he's had with anyone before he had to leave Montagui.
A man sitting at the head of one of the tables stands and rings a handbell, which must signal the end of breakfast because Amada swallows the apricot and stuffs the rest of her bread in her mouth as people push the benches back and stand up.
"Morning meeting next," Rainaut says. "Announcements, work assignments. You had them at the friary, didn't you?"
Brother Peire nods. He somehow doubts the abbot would approve of whatever the heretics are going to discuss at their meeting, though. From what he's seen so far, he doesn't think he's going to entirely approve either.
But the heretics' morning meeting is not much different from the friars' morning meeting, and the chapter house looks much the same. Work assignments are handed out, or at least the woman leading the meeting – the same woman who's been leading the services – reminds several people of their jobs, a man who must be the head of the kitchen asks that whoever kept the black cat with them last night please let her sleep in the pantry tonight because there are mice and she needs to be free to catch them, a young man announces that one of the goats will probably give birth later today, and an older woman says that yes, there will be lessons in the library after the meeting, please don't be late.
"Before you all leave," the leader says, "Brother Rainaut would like a word."
Brother Peire must look alarmed, although he couldn't say why, because Rainaut whispers "It's nothing bad, I promise" before making his way to the front of the room.
"Peace upon you this morning, my brothers and sisters," he says.
"Peace upon you as well," everyone choruses.
"As you probably know by now, yesterday I returned from the inquisitor's prison with my body and soul intact and in the company of a good man without a home. His name is Peire and he has lost much and is suffering greatly, so be kind to him."
Brother Peire wants to sink into the floor. He wants God to strike him dead where he stands. He wants to turn and run out of the chapter house and away from the monastery and these heretics who are going to be so kind to him when all he has ever wanted from them was for them to repent and come back to the loving embrace of the Mother Church.
Until not so very long ago, he would have told them to their faces that they were wrong and would never see Heaven, that God would turn His back on them and deny them His love and mercy unless they repented of their heresy and came back into the light. He still thinks they're wrong, even though he can accept that their wrongness gives them comfort, and that's not such a terrible thing. But he represents forces that would destroy every last one of them, given half a chance. And they're going to take him in as one of their own.
Someone puts a hand on his arm and says "Be welcome, brother. Hopefully you'll find peace."
"Don't call me 'brother'," he says, almost automatically, and then remembers his manners. "Please."
"Is that all?" the leader asks the crowd. She looks at Rainaut, who nods. "Meeting concluded, then. Peace be with you in your day's endeavors."
Heretics offer greetings to Brother Peire as they start to leave, but Rainaut pushes through the crowd towards him before he has to listen to too many well-wishers.
"Why did you do that?" he hisses.
"I thought it would help," Rainaut says. "People want to know who you are and why you're here, and it seemed much easier to do it this way."
"Everyone turned to look at me. Please, can we go? I don't want to be here."
"You have to meet the council. If you're going to stay here with us, you have to have something to do." He takes Brother Peire's arm and pulls him out of the crowd and over to the wall. "I think you have to stay, Peire. I promise we'll find you something that you want to do, something you're comfortable with. It can be a solitary job if you want, so you don't have to talk to anyone or answer anyone's questions." He looks sincere and concerned and determined. Brother Peire feels a surge of affection for him.
"I know you want me to be happy. I know you want me to, to find peace. I don't think I can. I don't belong here, you know that. But I'll try. I will. I don't, I don't have a choice."
"You always have a choice." Rainaut takes his face in both hands. "I want you to know that."
"What's my other choice? To take to the road? I'm not a friar any more. I'd be a beggar. I can't do that. I'm still a man of God, I'm just a man of God without a house to worship Him in."
"Rainaut?" someone calls. "We have things to do. Let us speak."
"We can talk more later," Rainaut tells Brother Peire. "Whatever your concerns, you can tell me. Now we have to find you some work. It might help you to have something useful to do." He leads Brother Peire across the chapter house to where five people are waiting, three men and two women, one of them the worship leader. The other woman looks to be about Rainaut's age, and one of the men looks almost as old as the Gray Friars' abbot, and the other three are somewhere in between.
"So you've come to us from tragedy," the younger woman says. "Be welcome. Brother Rainaut says he'll explain everything to you – what we do, what we believe, how we live, the schedules of our days. It's not so different from any other religious community, on the surface. We work, we pray, we come together to worship and to eat and to celebrate our God."
"What did you do in your previous life?" one of the men asks. "When you weren't praying for our lost souls, anyway."
"Martel," the worship leader admonishes. Martel just shrugs.
"I worked in the garden," Brother Peire says. He can talk about this. It isn't quite as personal as why he was forced to leave, or how much he loved what he did and who he got to be. "Every afternoon I went with one of my brother friars to pray with a woman in her house – we would lead the afternoon service so she could worship – and sometimes I helped one of the older brother friars with confession and our public ministry. We'd go to the marketplace and hear confessions from farmers or shepherds or people who had traveled from smaller towns or villages, who didn't want to or couldn't confess their sins locally." He'd enjoyed that, being able to talk to men and women who had committed some sin, usually very minor sins, but who wanted to be absolved and to serve whatever penance was required. "I would go to people's houses to minister to them there. We brought comfort to the sick and homebound. Sometimes I helped in the infirmary. I copied manuscripts from the library for posterity, and sometimes people would bring us old manuscripts that they wanted to preserve, so we would copy them onto better parchment."
"Did you have a school? Did you teach at all?"
"We did, but I didn't teach in it, not really. I can read and write and do sums, so I guess I could teach that, if you needed me to."
"We want to know what you need," another man said.
"I need to go home."
Rainaut sighs.
"I know," Brother Peire goes on, "I can't. They, they kicked me out. Made me renounce my vows. But that's what I need, if you want to know. To go home."
"We're very sorry, Brother Peire," the worship leader says, sympathy all over her face. He stiffens at her use of his title and can feel Rainaut's hand on his arm, trying to calm him. "We are. We know you think of us as heretics, as apostates, and most of us have no great love for your church, but we can't condone a man being forced out of a life he loves, even for our sake. We really do only want to help you find peace again. What can we do for you here that will help you?"
"Do you want to see what I do?" Rainaut asks. "I don't know if you have any facility with wood, but I can take you to the workshop and show you my occupation."
"I'd like that, yes," Brother Peire says. "Maybe you should show me around and, and explain things, and later I'll find a, a job."
"Is that acceptable?" Rainaut asks the council. The five of them nod. "Then we'll do that. Can Peire make this decision on his own, and we'll come to you later and tell you what he decided?"
"That would be acceptable," concedes the man who's probably as old as the abbot. "But come to a decision soon."
"We will. Thank you. Peace be upon you in your endeavors."
"Peace be upon you as well."
The other four council members nod in agreement and head out of the chapter house, leaving Brother Peire and Rainaut alone.
"Was that so terrible?" Rainaut asks, grinning.
"I still don't know what to do with myself," Brother Peire says. "But I think you're right, I think it will help me to have work to do. I always did at the friary. There was always something that had to be done."
"I'll give you the tour and tell you all about us. It will take until lunch, at least. How's that?"
"I think that's fine."
"How did you sleep?" Rainaut asks, as they walk outside. "Did I ask?"
"I didn't dream."
"Is that good?"
"I had a nightmare before you woke me for the midnight service. I don't want to talk about it. But I didn't dream at all afterwards."
"So that's good, then." He starts towards the front gate. "We'll start with the gate, as if we were coming to the monastery for the first time. Well, as if you were seeing the place for the first time, and I was your tour guide."
"That's not much to pretend," Brother Peire comments. He feels a little better. He can handle being in this place with Rainaut. It's just when everyone else gathers around and wants to talk to him and make him feel welcome that he panics and feels the weight of everything he lost. He knows Rainaut and likes him and prefers his company to that of anyone else here, and Rainaut knows him and likes him and is trying very hard to make him feel more comfortable here. So Brother Peire will at least try to make himself at home.
And the first thing to do is to learn exactly what home entails – the buildings, the gardens, the livestock, the industries and residences and holy places. What people do, where they do it. He hopes he'll find at least one thing he recognizes, one familiar thing, that can remind him of the friary without the attendant empty feeling of a place he'll never see again.
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Rainaut opens the window so he can push the shutter open as well, so light can get into the room. The sun is still rising so there isn't much light, but it's enough for Brother Peire to see that there's a basin of water on the stool and now that he's opened the window, Rainaut can splash water on his face and wipe it off with the hem of his shirt.
Brother Peire could probably say a lot of things, but what comes out of his mouth is "You don't have a towel?" And Rainaut laughs.
"Good morning to you too, friar," he says, grinning. His expression sobers and he adds "I'm sorry, you probably don't want to be reminded. Good morning, Peire. Wash your face and we'll go."
Brother Peire gets out of bed, stretches, splashes water on his face. It's cold, the water, but that at least is something he's used to. He doesn't want to dry himself on his robe – they had towels at the friary, scratchy as they were, and he was taught respect for his very few belongings, even though as a friar the only things he really owned were his robe, his sandals, a pair of shoes for cold and snowy weather, and an eight-rayed sun pendant, the symbol of the Mother Church, on a leather cord. The Gray Friars even took that from him, when they made him renounce his vows (although in his heart he hasn't renounced anything), along with the gray robe that marked him as one of them. Many lay people wear a sun, not just monks and friars and holy men, so they could have let him keep his, but the Gray Friars made him leave under suspicion of heresy, and accused heretics are not allowed to have one.
They still wear them, sometimes, as a cover, or so Brother Peire was told. When one is looking for heretics, one can't always count on what they do or do not wear.
Brother Peire doesn't remember seeing anyone last night with a sun pendant, but to be fair he wasn't looking, and people sometimes wear theirs under their clothes. Rainaut doesn't wear one.
He misses it.
He puts on his sandals and follows Rainaut out of the cell, around the cloister, and into the church. The light behind the round window over the altar comes through in red and yellow and blue and green, the colors growing brighter and stronger as the sun rises. The same woman who led both services last night leads this one, and as with those services, there are things Brother Peire recognizes and things that are completely unfamiliar, and most disconcertingly, things that are so close to what he knows, until the congregation gets to a different word or goes off into a different tune.
The dawn service seems to be mostly songs of praise and gratitude, and appeals to God's mercy for a productive and holy day. The sentiment is something he knows well, even if the form it takes isn't.
Back in Montagui, his brother friars are chanting almost the same chants, singing almost the same songs, standing shoulder to shoulder in worship. The chapel is full of men in gray, voices lifted up to God.
Rainaut squeezes his hand.
I can't do this, Brother Peire thinks. Please, Lord, give me strength. Do not forsake me.
"Now breakfast," Rainaut tells him in an undertone, after the service is concluded and people stand and start filing out. "And then the morning meeting, and then we meet with the Council to find a place for you."
Brother Peire can't say that his place is in Montagui, in the Gray Friars' house. He can't say it, but he wants to.
Breakfast is bread and honey and milk and dried fruit, plates and pitchers traveling up and down the long tables in the refectory just as they did last night. He tries to listen to the hum of conversation around him, people apparently talking about their dreams or their work for the day or each other or things he can't make out. Rainaut chats with the person on his other side, and the people across the table, and the woman on the other side of Brother Peire asks how he slept but all he can tell her is that he did.
"Was it strange to sleep in your own cell?" she asks. "Don't friars share a dormitory? There's a bed in our dormitory if you'll be more comfortable there, but try not to sleep next to Sengrat – he snores."
"Rainaut slept with me," Brother Peire says. "On the floor, I mean" - because the woman raises an eyebrow - "so I wasn't completely alone."
"He's a good man. We heard how you visited him in prison. That was very kind of you."
"I was curious. I wanted to know how he could forsake the Mother Church for heresy. Brother Abbot gave me permission. And I, I liked talking to him. We became friends." It's much easier to talk about Rainaut than it is to talk about his life as a friar.
"I'm called Amada," she says. "Rainaut did right to bring you here. We practice love and joy and charity. Oh, not that your friars don't – I was always taught that a friar's mission is one of charity and humility and prayer, but there wasn't a chapter where I grew up, so I never knew any friars myself – but we aren't subject to the whims of your church, we rule ourselves, we don't owe anything to any governing body. The council only serves for a year, and then we vote a new one. Even the leaders of the services, they do it for a week and then someone else has a turn."
"Amada," Rainaut says, leaning around Brother Peire, "don't scare him."
"I'm not. You're not scared off, are you?" she asks Brother Peire.
"I don't think it matters," he says. "I don't, I mean, I can't, I can't – I can't go home."
"Oh." Her face falls. She's pretty, with green eyes and freckles and light brown hair braided around her head, and if Brother Peire were to pass her in the street he'd think she was someone for whom God had shown favor. But she's an apostate. "I knew that, I'm so sorry. Most people come here of their own free will. They just walk out of their lives and come here because they'd rather be here. I think Rostans is the only one who came because he didn't have anywhere to go. He was a weaver. His guild kicked him out and his wife had their marriage annulled."
"Amada," Rainaut says, more sternly this time. "Gossip."
"It isn't gossip, it's fact. You can ask him," she tells Brother Peire. "Rostans. He'll tell you. It's not as if it's a big secret." She bites into a dried apricot with an encouraging look. Brother Peire wonders if she's going to find him later and want to know if he talked to Rostans yet. He hopes not.
"I'll introduce you to him later, if you want," Rainaut says to Brother Peire, who just shakes his head. This is the most conversation he's had with anyone before he had to leave Montagui.
A man sitting at the head of one of the tables stands and rings a handbell, which must signal the end of breakfast because Amada swallows the apricot and stuffs the rest of her bread in her mouth as people push the benches back and stand up.
"Morning meeting next," Rainaut says. "Announcements, work assignments. You had them at the friary, didn't you?"
Brother Peire nods. He somehow doubts the abbot would approve of whatever the heretics are going to discuss at their meeting, though. From what he's seen so far, he doesn't think he's going to entirely approve either.
But the heretics' morning meeting is not much different from the friars' morning meeting, and the chapter house looks much the same. Work assignments are handed out, or at least the woman leading the meeting – the same woman who's been leading the services – reminds several people of their jobs, a man who must be the head of the kitchen asks that whoever kept the black cat with them last night please let her sleep in the pantry tonight because there are mice and she needs to be free to catch them, a young man announces that one of the goats will probably give birth later today, and an older woman says that yes, there will be lessons in the library after the meeting, please don't be late.
"Before you all leave," the leader says, "Brother Rainaut would like a word."
Brother Peire must look alarmed, although he couldn't say why, because Rainaut whispers "It's nothing bad, I promise" before making his way to the front of the room.
"Peace upon you this morning, my brothers and sisters," he says.
"Peace upon you as well," everyone choruses.
"As you probably know by now, yesterday I returned from the inquisitor's prison with my body and soul intact and in the company of a good man without a home. His name is Peire and he has lost much and is suffering greatly, so be kind to him."
Brother Peire wants to sink into the floor. He wants God to strike him dead where he stands. He wants to turn and run out of the chapter house and away from the monastery and these heretics who are going to be so kind to him when all he has ever wanted from them was for them to repent and come back to the loving embrace of the Mother Church.
Until not so very long ago, he would have told them to their faces that they were wrong and would never see Heaven, that God would turn His back on them and deny them His love and mercy unless they repented of their heresy and came back into the light. He still thinks they're wrong, even though he can accept that their wrongness gives them comfort, and that's not such a terrible thing. But he represents forces that would destroy every last one of them, given half a chance. And they're going to take him in as one of their own.
Someone puts a hand on his arm and says "Be welcome, brother. Hopefully you'll find peace."
"Don't call me 'brother'," he says, almost automatically, and then remembers his manners. "Please."
"Is that all?" the leader asks the crowd. She looks at Rainaut, who nods. "Meeting concluded, then. Peace be with you in your day's endeavors."
Heretics offer greetings to Brother Peire as they start to leave, but Rainaut pushes through the crowd towards him before he has to listen to too many well-wishers.
"Why did you do that?" he hisses.
"I thought it would help," Rainaut says. "People want to know who you are and why you're here, and it seemed much easier to do it this way."
"Everyone turned to look at me. Please, can we go? I don't want to be here."
"You have to meet the council. If you're going to stay here with us, you have to have something to do." He takes Brother Peire's arm and pulls him out of the crowd and over to the wall. "I think you have to stay, Peire. I promise we'll find you something that you want to do, something you're comfortable with. It can be a solitary job if you want, so you don't have to talk to anyone or answer anyone's questions." He looks sincere and concerned and determined. Brother Peire feels a surge of affection for him.
"I know you want me to be happy. I know you want me to, to find peace. I don't think I can. I don't belong here, you know that. But I'll try. I will. I don't, I don't have a choice."
"You always have a choice." Rainaut takes his face in both hands. "I want you to know that."
"What's my other choice? To take to the road? I'm not a friar any more. I'd be a beggar. I can't do that. I'm still a man of God, I'm just a man of God without a house to worship Him in."
"Rainaut?" someone calls. "We have things to do. Let us speak."
"We can talk more later," Rainaut tells Brother Peire. "Whatever your concerns, you can tell me. Now we have to find you some work. It might help you to have something useful to do." He leads Brother Peire across the chapter house to where five people are waiting, three men and two women, one of them the worship leader. The other woman looks to be about Rainaut's age, and one of the men looks almost as old as the Gray Friars' abbot, and the other three are somewhere in between.
"So you've come to us from tragedy," the younger woman says. "Be welcome. Brother Rainaut says he'll explain everything to you – what we do, what we believe, how we live, the schedules of our days. It's not so different from any other religious community, on the surface. We work, we pray, we come together to worship and to eat and to celebrate our God."
"What did you do in your previous life?" one of the men asks. "When you weren't praying for our lost souls, anyway."
"Martel," the worship leader admonishes. Martel just shrugs.
"I worked in the garden," Brother Peire says. He can talk about this. It isn't quite as personal as why he was forced to leave, or how much he loved what he did and who he got to be. "Every afternoon I went with one of my brother friars to pray with a woman in her house – we would lead the afternoon service so she could worship – and sometimes I helped one of the older brother friars with confession and our public ministry. We'd go to the marketplace and hear confessions from farmers or shepherds or people who had traveled from smaller towns or villages, who didn't want to or couldn't confess their sins locally." He'd enjoyed that, being able to talk to men and women who had committed some sin, usually very minor sins, but who wanted to be absolved and to serve whatever penance was required. "I would go to people's houses to minister to them there. We brought comfort to the sick and homebound. Sometimes I helped in the infirmary. I copied manuscripts from the library for posterity, and sometimes people would bring us old manuscripts that they wanted to preserve, so we would copy them onto better parchment."
"Did you have a school? Did you teach at all?"
"We did, but I didn't teach in it, not really. I can read and write and do sums, so I guess I could teach that, if you needed me to."
"We want to know what you need," another man said.
"I need to go home."
Rainaut sighs.
"I know," Brother Peire goes on, "I can't. They, they kicked me out. Made me renounce my vows. But that's what I need, if you want to know. To go home."
"We're very sorry, Brother Peire," the worship leader says, sympathy all over her face. He stiffens at her use of his title and can feel Rainaut's hand on his arm, trying to calm him. "We are. We know you think of us as heretics, as apostates, and most of us have no great love for your church, but we can't condone a man being forced out of a life he loves, even for our sake. We really do only want to help you find peace again. What can we do for you here that will help you?"
"Do you want to see what I do?" Rainaut asks. "I don't know if you have any facility with wood, but I can take you to the workshop and show you my occupation."
"I'd like that, yes," Brother Peire says. "Maybe you should show me around and, and explain things, and later I'll find a, a job."
"Is that acceptable?" Rainaut asks the council. The five of them nod. "Then we'll do that. Can Peire make this decision on his own, and we'll come to you later and tell you what he decided?"
"That would be acceptable," concedes the man who's probably as old as the abbot. "But come to a decision soon."
"We will. Thank you. Peace be upon you in your endeavors."
"Peace be upon you as well."
The other four council members nod in agreement and head out of the chapter house, leaving Brother Peire and Rainaut alone.
"Was that so terrible?" Rainaut asks, grinning.
"I still don't know what to do with myself," Brother Peire says. "But I think you're right, I think it will help me to have work to do. I always did at the friary. There was always something that had to be done."
"I'll give you the tour and tell you all about us. It will take until lunch, at least. How's that?"
"I think that's fine."
"How did you sleep?" Rainaut asks, as they walk outside. "Did I ask?"
"I didn't dream."
"Is that good?"
"I had a nightmare before you woke me for the midnight service. I don't want to talk about it. But I didn't dream at all afterwards."
"So that's good, then." He starts towards the front gate. "We'll start with the gate, as if we were coming to the monastery for the first time. Well, as if you were seeing the place for the first time, and I was your tour guide."
"That's not much to pretend," Brother Peire comments. He feels a little better. He can handle being in this place with Rainaut. It's just when everyone else gathers around and wants to talk to him and make him feel welcome that he panics and feels the weight of everything he lost. He knows Rainaut and likes him and prefers his company to that of anyone else here, and Rainaut knows him and likes him and is trying very hard to make him feel more comfortable here. So Brother Peire will at least try to make himself at home.
And the first thing to do is to learn exactly what home entails – the buildings, the gardens, the livestock, the industries and residences and holy places. What people do, where they do it. He hopes he'll find at least one thing he recognizes, one familiar thing, that can remind him of the friary without the attendant empty feeling of a place he'll never see again.
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