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There was a pile of dirty straw outside the stable, Philip noted: the hands were following his orders and mucking out the stalls. He went out through the gate and walked through the village toward the bridge.
Was it presumptuous of me to reprove young William Beauvis? he asked himself as he passed among the shacks. He thought not, on reflection. In fact it would have been wrong to ignore such a disruption during the service.
He reached the bridge and put his head inside Paul’s little shelter. “Warm your feet on this,” he said, handing over the hot stone wrapped in leather. “When it cools a bit, take the leather off and put your feet directly on the stone. It should last until nightfall.”
Brother Paul was pathetically grateful. He slipped off his sandals and put his feet on the bundle immediately. “I can feel the pain easing already,” he said.
“If you put the stone back in the kitchen fire tonight it will be hot again by morning,” Philip said.
“Brother Milius won’t mind?” Paul said nervously.
“I guarantee it.”
“You’re very good to me, Brother Philip.”
“It’s nothing.” Philip left before Paul’s thanks became embarrassing. It was only a hot stone.
He returned to the priory. He went into the cloisters and washed his hands in the stone basin in the south walk, then entered the refectory. One of the monks was reading aloud at a lectern. Di
Philip nodded. He had seen it in the kitchen. His stomach rumbled.
The monk said: “We hear you have fresh fish every day at your cell in the forest.” There was envy in his voice.
Philip shook his head. “Every other day we have poultry,” he whispered.
The monk looked even more envious. “Salt fish here, six times a week.”
A servant placed a thick bread trencher in front of Philip, then put on it a fish fragrant with Brother Milius’s herbs. Philip’s mouth watered. He was about to attack the fish with his eating knife when a monk at the far end of the table stood up and pointed at him. It was the circuitor, the monk responsible for discipline. Philip thought: What now?
The circuitor broke the rule of silence, as was his right. “Brother Philip!”
The other monks stopped eating and the room went quiet.
Philip paused with his knife over the fish and looked up expectantly.
The circuitor said: “The rule is, no di
Philip sighed. It seemed he could do nothing right today. He put away his knife, handed the trencher and the fish back to the servant, and bowed his head to listen to the reading.
During the rest period after di
“I can’t understand how the priory can be in debt,” Philip said through a mouthful of fruit.
“It shouldn’t be,” Cuthbert said. “It owns more land, and collects tithes from more parish churches, than ever before.”
“So why aren’t we rich?”
“You know the system we have here-the monastery’s property is mostly divided up among the obedientaries. The sacrist has his lands, I have mine, and there are smaller endowments for the novice-master, the guest-master, the infirmarer and the almoner. The rest belongs to the prior. Each uses the income from his property to fulfill his obligations.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Well, all this property should be taken care of. For example, suppose we have some land, and we let it for a cash rent. We shouldn’t just give it to the highest bidder and collect the money. We ought to take care to find a good tenant, and supervise him to make sure he farms well; otherwise the pastures become waterlogged, the soil is exhausted, and the tenant is unable to pay the rent so he gives the land back to us in poor condition. Or take a grange, farmed by our employees and managed by monks: if nobody visits the grange except to take away its produce, the monks become slothful and depraved, the employees steal the crops, and the grange produces less and less as the years go by. Even a church needs to be looked after. We shouldn’t just take the tithes. We should put in a good priest who knows the Latin and leads a holy life. Otherwise the people descend into ungodliness, marrying and giving birth and dying without the blessing of the Church, and cheating on their tithes.”
“The obedientaries should manage their property carefully,” Philip said as he finished the last pear.
Cuthbert drew a cup of wine from a barrel. “They should, but they have other things on their minds. Anyway, what does the novice-master know about farming? Why should the infirmarer be a capable estate manager? Of course, a strong prior will force them to husband their resources, to some extent. But we’ve had a weak prior for thirteen years, and now we have no money to repair the cathedral church, and we eat salt fish six days a week, and the school is almost empty of novices, and no one comes to the guesthouse.”
Philip sipped his wine in gloomy silence. He found it difficult to think coolly about such appalling dissipation of God’s assets. He wanted to get hold of whoever was responsible and shake him until he saw sense. But in this case the person responsible was lying in a coffin behind the altar. There, at least, was a glimmer of hope. “Soon we’ll have a new prior,” Philip said. “He ought to put things right.”
Cuthbert shot him a peculiar look. “Remigius? Put things right?”
Philip was not sure what Cuthbert meant. “Remigius isn’t going to be the new prior, is he?”
“It’s likely.”