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smackenzieBrother Peire prays the Gray Friars' evening service alone in the chapel, feeling at peace with himself and his God. He stands before the altar, because that's what the friars do, even though he feels a little self-conscious doing so. But no one is going to interrupt him – even Rainaut would wait for him to finish – so he loses himself in the songs and the chants and the praise and the entreaties. It's not until the very last song has ended that he realizes that while he still misses the feeling of standing with his brother friars in worship, it's at least as much missing the feeling of worshipping in a community as it is worshipping with fellow friars. And in any case, he seems to be cobbling together his own schedule of prayers. He doesn't mind waking up in the middle of the night to come here and pray the late night service, what the friars always called Vigils, as if they were standing watch until the dawn. One night he might even wake Rainaut to come with him, so he might learn some of the friars' ways, the same that he's taught Brother Peire some of the heretics' ways.
Because in some of those ways, they're not so different after all. The Gray Friars live and work and worship in a community, as do the heretics. They pray together and eat together and work side by side, united in their faith and the practice of their beliefs. They accept new converts into the fold, and while St Austor was not as active a proselytizer as some of the founders of other friar orders, it's still part of their Charter, as it is for the heretics. The friars think men and women would be happier and spiritually healthier if they accept the primacy of the Mother Church and the Holy Father, whereas the heretics think people would be happier following their particular way of life. But at the same time, they've let Brother Peire hold on to his faith and continue in his own practice, at least as much as he can, without pressuring him to renounce his vows and swear to theirs.
The directions may be different, but the heretics and the Gray Friars all walk the same path – to love and serve God, to love and serve their community, and to find peace with both.
Brother Peire feels as if he's stumbled across a great truth. He really can be a friar among heretics, without losing the core of who he is and what he believes in. He doesn't have to renounce the teachings of his order, or the ways in which they live and serve God. He can stand with the heretics in their church and recite some of their prayers, learn their chants and their songs, and at the same time he can come here, to the little chapel, and kneel before the altar and make his own entreaties to God. He can lie with Rainaut in the fields, naked under the sky, and cry out his pleasure to the stars and to Rainaut's listening God.
There are things he can't accept – the heretics' dual-sex God, their indiscriminate coupling, their lack of hierarchy and strange way they cycle through spiritual leaders – but they've been patient with him, and more or less accepting of him, and he's come to believe that by and large, they're good people.
He kneels on the floor in front of the altar to make his own personal prayers, but what comes out is Forgive me, my Lord, for I lay with Rainaut under the sky and I took great pleasure from him and returned that pleasure as best I could, and I do not think it is a thing I should have to atone for.
And isn't that the most arrogant thing for him to believe.
I have kept You in my heart always, and everything I do is for Your greater glory. These people have been infinitely patient with me and have let me continue my spiritual practice as much as I can. I wear Your sun around my neck, to remind me of Your love and mercy and my service to You. You are my God before all others, and as much as I have tried to make a home here, for I did not think I had any other choice, I have not accepted the heretics' God or every one of the tenets of their faith. But they do not pressure me, and I wish to believe that at least some of them have come to care for me.
Not just Rainaut, because his love for Brother Peire is obvious, but Jaufre, and Felise, and Rostans who wants to make him a shirt, and Helis, and Amada. Brother Peire can admit to himself that he's come to care for some of them as well. Perhaps not as much as he loved his brother friars, but even that took time, and his time at the monastery is counted in mere months, not years. He thinks that it will happen eventually, that he will love these people as he loved his previous community.
The only difference is that he chose the Gray Friars of his own volition, and he was brought here because he had nowhere else to go. He would not have chosen to settle with a group of heretics, but he wants to think he's been here long enough and gotten to know them well enough that he can see that it was a kind of blessing that Rainaut was waiting for him when he was turned out of Montagui, to bring him here and give him shelter.
I still believe you might be testing me, my Lord, that You have given me this life to test my dedication to You. I hope that my service is still pleasing to You, and that my love is still acceptable to You, and that You will not turn Your face from me for the ways in which I have adapted.
I have seen Your face in the heights of my pleasure, and in the chanting of the congregation at dawn, and here in this little chapel, kneeling before the altar and making my prayers to You. I can hear You in the falling rain and the buzzing of the bees in their hives, and I can see You on the pages of the manuscript that I spend my days copying. Sometimes I can feel Your blessings upon me – You, and not the heretics' God. And sometimes I feel bereft.
But I am happy here, most days. These people have given me a home when I had none, and they have been kind to me, and I wish to think that You sent Rainaut to me so that he might bring me here and his people might take me in. I wish to believe that You have not abandoned me, and that my life and my happiness here are proof of Your love for me and Your faith that I still love You.
I am Your humble servant, Lord, now and always. I will never bring Rainaut to Your glory, for he is too happy in his faith, but it has given him the security that Your love and my service have given me, and I cannot deny him the thing that gives his life meaning. He would not deny me mine. Do not punish him, or the rest of this community, for they have only tried to lead their lives in as pure a manner as I wish to lead mine, and they have shown Your humble friar nothing but kindness.
And please, my Lord, for the love they showed me when I was young and for the many things they taught me and for the man they showed me how to be, shower blessings upon the Gray Friars, for they are good and faithful men, and they only wish to honor You and prove their worthiness in Your sight. I no longer carry any anger or sadness towards them for the way they turned me out, and I have not renounced all of my vows despite that I am no longer one of them. Bless Brother Gueri in his service to Sers Aelinor, and Brother Imbert on the day he takes to the road, and Brother Abbot for his leadership, and the rest of the order for their continued adherence to Your laws and Your word.
And bless Rainaut, Lord, and the rest of the community here, for their kindess and their charity and their patience and their acceptance. If You can find it in Your infinite mercy to show them the smallest glimmer of Your light, I believe they would take it and honor it.
He can't quite ask God to bless him, for that seems arrogant when he doesn't feel as if he needs to be forgiven for anything or shown any particular blessings, other than to be allowed to continue to worship and serve his own God as he wishes. And that's for the heretics to allow or not.
He's still kneeling when Rainaut comes into the chapel and sits in a pew behind him.
"Midnight service is in a few minutes," Rainaut says. "Do you think your God can hear you now?"
"I think so," Brother Peire says. He looks up at the window over the altar, at the yellow pane of glass that in its symbolism reflects the sun hanging around his neck. "I think He brought us together so that when the abbot made me leave my order, you'd be waiting for me to bring me here. I think this is where God wants me to be."
"How far you've come, and in such a short time."
Brother Peire stands up, brushes off his robe where he knelt on it, and holds out his hand to Rainaut. "I've offered my prayers to my God. Let's go offer them to yours."
Rainaut takes his hand, stands, and kisses him briefly. "We don't share any physical intimacy for a week after Midsummer, to make our coupling in the fields that much more special and holy, but God will forgive me one kiss." He cups the back of Brother Peire's head and this time kisses him more deeply, tongue pushing past Brother Peire's lips to take possession of his mouth. Brother Peire rests his hands on Rainaut's waist and returns the kiss with passion. He hopes his God doesn't mind. He knows Rainaut's God would be pleased.
Brother Peire finally has to pull away. He licks his lips and ducks his head and smiles to himself, almost bashfully.
"Are you blushing?" Rainaut asks, surprised and delighted.
"I'm not used to kissing anyone in God's holy house," Brother Peire admits. "Even here. Even, even you."
"I love you so, friar." Rainaut ruffles his hair. "You make me laugh."
And hand in hand they walk out of the chapel and towards the church for the heretics' midnight service.
Brother Peire's new-found peace and new-found acceptance of his place in the heretics' community is sorely tested a couple of weeks later. Two days after Midsummer he talks to Rostans who talks to Felise, and a week after that he has two lightweight shirts, one dyed green and one a more natural linen color, and a pair of brown breeches. He takes off the sand-colored robe the friars gave him for the last time and puts on the clothes of a secular man, clothes the heretics made for him. There are no mirrors in the monastery but he can see his reflection in the rippled surface of the river running past the place, and he looks strange to himself. But his clothes reflect more the man he's become, and less the man he used to be, and he can't help but be pleased.
He still loves his work in the copy room, and now that he looks more like them, the few heretics who used to look at him askance for his friar's robe now look at him with approval. He still wears his sun pendant outside his shirt, but he could be any semi-faithful person in Montagui, a farmer or a secular scribe or a merchant's assistant. He isn't entirely unhappy by this arrangement. He knows who he is in his heart, and he knows how much of his life is still dedicated to his God.
Once or twice he misses his brother friars and his former holy life enough to put the robe back on, and even though he is never the most talkative of people, on those days he's especially quiet and moves through the hours as if a small cloud of melancholy is following him around.
But it's on a pleasant, sunny day, a day of great progress in his copying and a day of general delight with the world, that a girl named Jacotte, who works in the gardens, approaches him after dinner and asks him if he would do her a great favor, and father her baby.
"Um. What?" he answers, taken completely by surprise.
"I'm ready to have a child," she explains, as if that should be enough.
They're standing in the cloister, and Rainaut pats Brother Peire on the shoulder as if to say "You're on your own with this one" and walks off. Brother Peire feels a little exposed. Anyone could walk by and listen in on their conversation.
"But why do you - "
Jacotte laughs. "Why do you think? You're cute, you're pretty smart, Jaufre says you're a good copyist, Rainaut thought you were a good enough person to bring here, and it's no secret you're still dedicated to your God, which means you're loyal and faithful and spiritually honest. But you don't go around telling us how wrong we are, which means you're accepting of other people and different beliefs. You're quiet, I'm not, I think we'd make a pretty baby." She's smiling at him, excited, eager. And she's pretty, even he can see that, with bouncy dark blonde hair she seems to have let down for just this occasion, and suntanned skin from working outside all day, and a round face and blue eyes and a shape that he knows other men (and some women) find pleasing. But he's not at all attracted to her, and what she's asking of him goes against everything the Gray Friars ever taught him, and every one of the Mother Church's laws on procreation.
Well, except for the one about men and women lying together for the sole purpose of producing children. Because Brother Peire can't believe Jacotte wants any kind of intimacy with him for any other reason.
He doesn't want to tell her no, but there's no way he can tell her yes.
"Are you worried Rainaut would be hurt?" she asks. "Don't be. We're not that possessive. We don't believe in holding our partners back from other relationships if they want them, unless those relationships are actively harmful. And I'm not harmful at all. I don't want to take you away from him." Brother Peire must look shocked – and he certainly feels shock, with the way she's so casually talking about his private life – because Jacotte pats him on the arm reassuringly and says "It's no secret how dedicated you are to each other. I have no desire to get between you. I just want you to get me pregnant, and then I promise I'll never ask you to lie with me again."
"I don't – I don't understand," he manages to stammer, and she laughs again.
"I just told you! You're so cute, and you're a good man – I don't care that you used to be a friar and your order had Rainaut locked up in prison – no, I do care, but I also know it wasn't anything you wanted, and you went to see him every day and became his friend, and look at you, you look like us now, you've made such an effort to fit in here."
"But I'm, I'm - "
"You're not one of us, I know. Rainaut told me you'd say that. You still wear your church's sun." She points to it. "I don't mind. I said I thought that makes you honest and faithful, didn't I? If you need to talk to Rainaut, you can. I don't need an answer right now."
"What do you mean he told you I'd say that?"
"I mentioned this to him first, just to get his opinion. He knows you better than anyone else. He said you'd need to be convinced, but he also thought you'd make a fine father for my baby." She pulls her hair back off her neck and flaps the resultant tail behind her to make the faintest of breezes. "I think you will too."
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Because in some of those ways, they're not so different after all. The Gray Friars live and work and worship in a community, as do the heretics. They pray together and eat together and work side by side, united in their faith and the practice of their beliefs. They accept new converts into the fold, and while St Austor was not as active a proselytizer as some of the founders of other friar orders, it's still part of their Charter, as it is for the heretics. The friars think men and women would be happier and spiritually healthier if they accept the primacy of the Mother Church and the Holy Father, whereas the heretics think people would be happier following their particular way of life. But at the same time, they've let Brother Peire hold on to his faith and continue in his own practice, at least as much as he can, without pressuring him to renounce his vows and swear to theirs.
The directions may be different, but the heretics and the Gray Friars all walk the same path – to love and serve God, to love and serve their community, and to find peace with both.
Brother Peire feels as if he's stumbled across a great truth. He really can be a friar among heretics, without losing the core of who he is and what he believes in. He doesn't have to renounce the teachings of his order, or the ways in which they live and serve God. He can stand with the heretics in their church and recite some of their prayers, learn their chants and their songs, and at the same time he can come here, to the little chapel, and kneel before the altar and make his own entreaties to God. He can lie with Rainaut in the fields, naked under the sky, and cry out his pleasure to the stars and to Rainaut's listening God.
There are things he can't accept – the heretics' dual-sex God, their indiscriminate coupling, their lack of hierarchy and strange way they cycle through spiritual leaders – but they've been patient with him, and more or less accepting of him, and he's come to believe that by and large, they're good people.
He kneels on the floor in front of the altar to make his own personal prayers, but what comes out is Forgive me, my Lord, for I lay with Rainaut under the sky and I took great pleasure from him and returned that pleasure as best I could, and I do not think it is a thing I should have to atone for.
And isn't that the most arrogant thing for him to believe.
I have kept You in my heart always, and everything I do is for Your greater glory. These people have been infinitely patient with me and have let me continue my spiritual practice as much as I can. I wear Your sun around my neck, to remind me of Your love and mercy and my service to You. You are my God before all others, and as much as I have tried to make a home here, for I did not think I had any other choice, I have not accepted the heretics' God or every one of the tenets of their faith. But they do not pressure me, and I wish to believe that at least some of them have come to care for me.
Not just Rainaut, because his love for Brother Peire is obvious, but Jaufre, and Felise, and Rostans who wants to make him a shirt, and Helis, and Amada. Brother Peire can admit to himself that he's come to care for some of them as well. Perhaps not as much as he loved his brother friars, but even that took time, and his time at the monastery is counted in mere months, not years. He thinks that it will happen eventually, that he will love these people as he loved his previous community.
The only difference is that he chose the Gray Friars of his own volition, and he was brought here because he had nowhere else to go. He would not have chosen to settle with a group of heretics, but he wants to think he's been here long enough and gotten to know them well enough that he can see that it was a kind of blessing that Rainaut was waiting for him when he was turned out of Montagui, to bring him here and give him shelter.
I still believe you might be testing me, my Lord, that You have given me this life to test my dedication to You. I hope that my service is still pleasing to You, and that my love is still acceptable to You, and that You will not turn Your face from me for the ways in which I have adapted.
I have seen Your face in the heights of my pleasure, and in the chanting of the congregation at dawn, and here in this little chapel, kneeling before the altar and making my prayers to You. I can hear You in the falling rain and the buzzing of the bees in their hives, and I can see You on the pages of the manuscript that I spend my days copying. Sometimes I can feel Your blessings upon me – You, and not the heretics' God. And sometimes I feel bereft.
But I am happy here, most days. These people have given me a home when I had none, and they have been kind to me, and I wish to think that You sent Rainaut to me so that he might bring me here and his people might take me in. I wish to believe that You have not abandoned me, and that my life and my happiness here are proof of Your love for me and Your faith that I still love You.
I am Your humble servant, Lord, now and always. I will never bring Rainaut to Your glory, for he is too happy in his faith, but it has given him the security that Your love and my service have given me, and I cannot deny him the thing that gives his life meaning. He would not deny me mine. Do not punish him, or the rest of this community, for they have only tried to lead their lives in as pure a manner as I wish to lead mine, and they have shown Your humble friar nothing but kindness.
And please, my Lord, for the love they showed me when I was young and for the many things they taught me and for the man they showed me how to be, shower blessings upon the Gray Friars, for they are good and faithful men, and they only wish to honor You and prove their worthiness in Your sight. I no longer carry any anger or sadness towards them for the way they turned me out, and I have not renounced all of my vows despite that I am no longer one of them. Bless Brother Gueri in his service to Sers Aelinor, and Brother Imbert on the day he takes to the road, and Brother Abbot for his leadership, and the rest of the order for their continued adherence to Your laws and Your word.
And bless Rainaut, Lord, and the rest of the community here, for their kindess and their charity and their patience and their acceptance. If You can find it in Your infinite mercy to show them the smallest glimmer of Your light, I believe they would take it and honor it.
He can't quite ask God to bless him, for that seems arrogant when he doesn't feel as if he needs to be forgiven for anything or shown any particular blessings, other than to be allowed to continue to worship and serve his own God as he wishes. And that's for the heretics to allow or not.
He's still kneeling when Rainaut comes into the chapel and sits in a pew behind him.
"Midnight service is in a few minutes," Rainaut says. "Do you think your God can hear you now?"
"I think so," Brother Peire says. He looks up at the window over the altar, at the yellow pane of glass that in its symbolism reflects the sun hanging around his neck. "I think He brought us together so that when the abbot made me leave my order, you'd be waiting for me to bring me here. I think this is where God wants me to be."
"How far you've come, and in such a short time."
Brother Peire stands up, brushes off his robe where he knelt on it, and holds out his hand to Rainaut. "I've offered my prayers to my God. Let's go offer them to yours."
Rainaut takes his hand, stands, and kisses him briefly. "We don't share any physical intimacy for a week after Midsummer, to make our coupling in the fields that much more special and holy, but God will forgive me one kiss." He cups the back of Brother Peire's head and this time kisses him more deeply, tongue pushing past Brother Peire's lips to take possession of his mouth. Brother Peire rests his hands on Rainaut's waist and returns the kiss with passion. He hopes his God doesn't mind. He knows Rainaut's God would be pleased.
Brother Peire finally has to pull away. He licks his lips and ducks his head and smiles to himself, almost bashfully.
"Are you blushing?" Rainaut asks, surprised and delighted.
"I'm not used to kissing anyone in God's holy house," Brother Peire admits. "Even here. Even, even you."
"I love you so, friar." Rainaut ruffles his hair. "You make me laugh."
And hand in hand they walk out of the chapel and towards the church for the heretics' midnight service.
Brother Peire's new-found peace and new-found acceptance of his place in the heretics' community is sorely tested a couple of weeks later. Two days after Midsummer he talks to Rostans who talks to Felise, and a week after that he has two lightweight shirts, one dyed green and one a more natural linen color, and a pair of brown breeches. He takes off the sand-colored robe the friars gave him for the last time and puts on the clothes of a secular man, clothes the heretics made for him. There are no mirrors in the monastery but he can see his reflection in the rippled surface of the river running past the place, and he looks strange to himself. But his clothes reflect more the man he's become, and less the man he used to be, and he can't help but be pleased.
He still loves his work in the copy room, and now that he looks more like them, the few heretics who used to look at him askance for his friar's robe now look at him with approval. He still wears his sun pendant outside his shirt, but he could be any semi-faithful person in Montagui, a farmer or a secular scribe or a merchant's assistant. He isn't entirely unhappy by this arrangement. He knows who he is in his heart, and he knows how much of his life is still dedicated to his God.
Once or twice he misses his brother friars and his former holy life enough to put the robe back on, and even though he is never the most talkative of people, on those days he's especially quiet and moves through the hours as if a small cloud of melancholy is following him around.
But it's on a pleasant, sunny day, a day of great progress in his copying and a day of general delight with the world, that a girl named Jacotte, who works in the gardens, approaches him after dinner and asks him if he would do her a great favor, and father her baby.
"Um. What?" he answers, taken completely by surprise.
"I'm ready to have a child," she explains, as if that should be enough.
They're standing in the cloister, and Rainaut pats Brother Peire on the shoulder as if to say "You're on your own with this one" and walks off. Brother Peire feels a little exposed. Anyone could walk by and listen in on their conversation.
"But why do you - "
Jacotte laughs. "Why do you think? You're cute, you're pretty smart, Jaufre says you're a good copyist, Rainaut thought you were a good enough person to bring here, and it's no secret you're still dedicated to your God, which means you're loyal and faithful and spiritually honest. But you don't go around telling us how wrong we are, which means you're accepting of other people and different beliefs. You're quiet, I'm not, I think we'd make a pretty baby." She's smiling at him, excited, eager. And she's pretty, even he can see that, with bouncy dark blonde hair she seems to have let down for just this occasion, and suntanned skin from working outside all day, and a round face and blue eyes and a shape that he knows other men (and some women) find pleasing. But he's not at all attracted to her, and what she's asking of him goes against everything the Gray Friars ever taught him, and every one of the Mother Church's laws on procreation.
Well, except for the one about men and women lying together for the sole purpose of producing children. Because Brother Peire can't believe Jacotte wants any kind of intimacy with him for any other reason.
He doesn't want to tell her no, but there's no way he can tell her yes.
"Are you worried Rainaut would be hurt?" she asks. "Don't be. We're not that possessive. We don't believe in holding our partners back from other relationships if they want them, unless those relationships are actively harmful. And I'm not harmful at all. I don't want to take you away from him." Brother Peire must look shocked – and he certainly feels shock, with the way she's so casually talking about his private life – because Jacotte pats him on the arm reassuringly and says "It's no secret how dedicated you are to each other. I have no desire to get between you. I just want you to get me pregnant, and then I promise I'll never ask you to lie with me again."
"I don't – I don't understand," he manages to stammer, and she laughs again.
"I just told you! You're so cute, and you're a good man – I don't care that you used to be a friar and your order had Rainaut locked up in prison – no, I do care, but I also know it wasn't anything you wanted, and you went to see him every day and became his friend, and look at you, you look like us now, you've made such an effort to fit in here."
"But I'm, I'm - "
"You're not one of us, I know. Rainaut told me you'd say that. You still wear your church's sun." She points to it. "I don't mind. I said I thought that makes you honest and faithful, didn't I? If you need to talk to Rainaut, you can. I don't need an answer right now."
"What do you mean he told you I'd say that?"
"I mentioned this to him first, just to get his opinion. He knows you better than anyone else. He said you'd need to be convinced, but he also thought you'd make a fine father for my baby." She pulls her hair back off her neck and flaps the resultant tail behind her to make the faintest of breezes. "I think you will too."
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total words: 47,328
