The Bell Tower Page 8

  A large lady with a commanding voice and an important presence appeared to be directing most of the operations. Nell got close enough to see she had a name badge, which proclaimed her to be Olive Orchard, Organizing Committee. She was berating a wispy little man who had a ginger moustache and an armful of books, and who was arguing plaintively that Olive might issue her orders until hell froze, but he, personally, did not give a tuppenny hoot if they were short of seating; in fact Olive might recall he had warned the committee about that at least twice. If you must needs advertise a performance of the Seven Deadly Sins, you should expect to be oversubscribed, said the wispy man firmly. In the meantime, the library would not open itself, not if the Seven Deadly Sins and the Five Cardinal Virtues mounted open warfare in the market square – and, that being so, he was off to unlock the doors that very minute.

  The reference to the library attracted Nell’s attention, so she followed the wispy man at a discreet distance. Sure enough, through a stone alley with small, bow-fronted shops on both sides, there was the library, and the man was unlocking the door and going inside. Nell gave him five minutes, then went in.

  The library was larger than she had expected, and it looked well stocked. Several shelves were labelled ‘Local History’, and there was even a small room through an archway leading off the main area, which bore the legend ‘Museum’. Nell could see glass cabinets and glass-topped display tables containing old documents and books. Surely there would be something on the Rede Abbas monks in there?

  She smiled at the wispy gentleman who had arranged himself behind the central desk, which had a card proclaiming him to be Gerald Orchard, Librarian. Husband of the formidable Olive? There had been unlikelier pairings. She asked if she could look in the museum.

  ‘Certainly you can.’ He was clearly delighted to be asked. ‘It’s all local history, a lot of it the genuine original material, and we’re rather proud of it.’ This was not said boastfully or self-consciously, but with a genuine pleasure in the subject. Nell thought he was rather an endearing little man, and hoped Olive did not henpeck him too much.

  For a moment she thought he was going to accompany her into the museum, but he only said, ‘Go straight through the arch over there. Are you here for the Revels?’

  ‘Yes, with my daughter.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice. We’re getting a lot of visitors for it. So gratifying, because everyone’s worked very hard. Let me know if you want any more information about any of the exhibits.’

  EIGHT

  As soon as Nell stepped through the archway, she was glad Gerald Orchard had remained in the main part of the library.

  There were display cases and cabinets, each one containing a fragment of Rede Abbas’s past, and also old photographs and sketches of people and buildings. There were even several costumes on life-size dummies. Some of the cabinets held pottery and glass, but others had old documents, and Nell went towards these at once.

  There were several photographs of the stone tower she and Beth had seen on the coast road, and a neatly typed account of its history.

  The Rede Abbas bell tower is a famous and very ancient local landmark. It’s thought to date to pre-Christian times, and although it’s not known what its original purpose was, during the Early Middle Ages the first St Benedict’s Monastery adopted it for the monks’ use.

  [It was a frequent ploy of the early Christians to make use of pagan symbols – their maxim being that if you put new wine into old casks, eventually the wine would come out tasting of the cask.]

  However, over the centuries the sea gradually eroded the coastline, and parts of the cliff collapsed. The monastery, by now severely unsafe, was abandoned, and the monks moved inland. The original monastery was finally lost altogether, with only the bell tower remaining, and, in fact, still used for some years. Gradually, though, it too became unsafe. The cliff slipped further, and the sea began to encroach on the tower, to the extent that the lower levels were – and still are – flooded at high tide.

  It’s believed there was an earlier bell, but the one that still hangs in the belfry dates to the sixteenth century and was donated by Edward Glaum. The Glaums were wealthy local landowners, and although the line has died out, the name can still be found attached to various buildings and local charities. [See articles about St Mary Abbas almshouses and Puddleston schoolhouse.]

  The Glaum bell is a massive, half-ton bronze structure. [See photo D]. Research suggests it was rendered mute – i.e. its tongue removed – around 1540, possibly at the order of the Abbot of the time, Seamus Flannery, although this cannot be verified. However, it is known that around that time St Benedict’s Monastery came under threat of suppression by King Henry VIII’s Commissioners.

  [See sketches D to G of the bell’s mechanism and a woodcut of local workmen removing the tongue, with the monks and the Abbot looking on.]

  A fragment of an anonymous sixteenth-century document, written during Seamus Flannery’s time as Abbot, has this to say about the tower:

  ‘There is a local belief that the Rede Abbas tower was originally built as a tomb and that, at times, in the deep and vasty darknesses of the night, the lonely chime can be heard, as if whatever lies buried there is calling to be rescued from its dark, silent grave …’

  Even today, there are those in the area who insist that the bell’s dead chime is sometimes heard.

  Nell read this account twice, enjoying it even more the second time. It was a pity that the sixteenth-century chronicler’s name had been lost; she would have liked to know the name of the person who had penned such a beautifully gothic sentence. But it was all grist to the researcher’s mill, and she made notes of everything, including Seamus Flannery’s name in case he came in useful as a research springboard. The account had apparently been compiled by a Daniel Goodbody, whose designation was given as ‘local historian’. This was a title that might mean anything, from an enthusiastic amateur to the head of some scholarly department for the entire county. Either role might be useful, though, so Nell added Mr Goodbody’s name to her notes, and moved along the displays, hoping the monastery would reappear.

  It did reappear, in the form of two pages headed, ‘Curious Cures from our Past’, taken from the records of a Brother Cuthwin, who apparently had been the monastery’s infirmarian in the mid-1500s. Nell had not realized that St Benedict’s had been a hospital order, and she thought Cuthwin might be the same brother whose robust account of the St Benedict’s Revels Owen had found. He might even be the person who had left that fragment of detail about the stone tower and the dead bell’s disconcerting habit of occasionally sounding in the deep and vasty darknesses of the night.

  The sixteenth-century script was virtually illegible to the untrained eye, but the helpful Daniel Goodbody had made a transcript, which was set out in clear modern print. Nell was grateful to Mr Goodbody, but she liked seeing Cuthwin’s actual writing on the page, even though she could only make out a few words of it.

  Several of Cuthwin’s remedies were set out, among which were his own cures for troublesome digestion. He had held by the efficacy of a mixture containing agrimony, which he wrote was, ‘Particularly good for the bowel, especially after an over-indulgence of rich foods.’ He had also believed that cytisus scoparius (common broom, he was careful to explain), was an excellent purge for the same indisposition, and that gooseberry jelly was sovereign for bilious humours. At the end of this last entry, he recorded, with innocent pleasure, how several of the local farmers’ wives had sought him out for this recipe, since it had been found helpful for calming morning sickness in pregnant ladies.

  At this point the present intruded in the form of the phone ringing in the main library. Gerald Orchard snatched it up, and plunged into an acerbic discussion, during which he pointed out that giving the Revels’ catering contract to Street Food Incorporated had never had his support in the first place. They were a cheap, catchpenny set-up; what you sowed, so you did reap, and Gerald was not in the least surprised that
the reaping had included an outbreak of sickness among some of the festival helpers after partaking of Street Food’s idea of crab salad. Clearly the crab had been off, and the ‘Freshly Caught’ slogan on the table was very likely a blatant infringement of the Trade Descriptions Act. In fact Gerald considered the festival committee had been lucky to get off with 24-hour attacks, because the entire population of Rede Abbas, not to mention incoming tourists, could well have ended up in the nearest A&E departmento.

  So if Olive had any sense, she would persuade the Organizing Committee to swallow its pride, and Olive herself would go cap in hand to The Fox & Goose to ask, as politely as possible, if they would lay on platters of suitable food. Sausages, chicken drumsticks, and plenty of jacket potatoes, served on long tables in Musselwhite’s Meadow would be Gerald’s recommendation, and exactly the kind of plain, easily managed food people would expect and enjoy on such an occasion, although he did not suppose anyone would take any notice of him. And now, if Olive did not mind, he was very busy, in fact he was in the process of scouring school registers from 1946, and yes, he was still in pursuit of that probably apocryphal chimera, and no, he had not banged on about it all through breakfast. He took it very unkindly of Olive to say so. And yes, he would be on time for the Seven Deadly Sins, and he was very sorry if Gluttony’s costume was the wrong size, but there was not much that he, Gerald, could do about it, and probably nothing anyone else could do about it, either. There was the sound of the phone being crossly put down.

  Nell smiled, and moved back to the display cabinets, still hoping to find a link to Oxford and Quire Court. She was pleased to see the next display still focused on the monastery, and there were three pages, written in an elegant, slanting and more or less legible hand. There were no actual dates, apart from the year at the head of a couple of them, but the typed label (Mr Goodbody again, presumably), explained that the pages were from the journal of Brother Andrew, OB, who had been at St Benedict’s during the mid-1800s.

  After a moment Nell identified ‘OB’ as Order of St Benedict and, with a feeling of pleased anticipation, started to read the nineteenth-century Andrew’s notes.

  My first November in the monastery – and a wild and unfriendly month it is. The days are filled with storms and glowering skies that press down like flat irons. The sea is being churned into a perpetual cauldron, as if Lucifer himself is stirring up broth for the sinners, and if this is Dorset in winter I shall begin to wish I had entered a Spanish monastery where it would at least be warm.

  I had assumed when I entered St Benedict’s that the rooms would be infused with incense and laden with serenity – dammit, I wanted serenity and incense! But everyone is preparing for winter, gathering and storing apples and quinces, and the kitchens are boiling blackberries and damsons for jam, smoking huge hams, and chopping tomatoes and herbs for chutney. The entire monastery is starting to smell like the scullery of a none-too-grand restaurant. As for the silence of a religious house – the cellarer dashes around the corridors, his feet pounding the stone floors, making anxious inventories of store cupboards and larders, pressing various people into service, and discussing financial calculations with the Bursar at meals.

  However, we gather serenely enough in our common room each evening after supper and before Compline, when it is our recreation hour. Most of us spend that hour studying or reading. Brother Egbert, the scholar among us, sits at a high sloping desk, with an oil lamp for illumination. The lamp casts a warm, comforting glow, which helps dispel some of the spiteful winds that sneak in through the ill-fitting windows.

  Egbert is working on papers left by a sixteenth-century Brother Cuthwin. He found a box containing the documents in a corner of an old still-room and is hoping that, once he has deciphered the pages, his translation can be bound and added to the monastery’s library – or perhaps even printed and given wider circulation. He has mentioned, with a modest air, a long-standing friendship with the Reverend Doctor Bulkeley Bandinel, Librarian of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. I have no idea if the Reverend Doctor would be interested in Cuthwin’s chronicles, but Egbert seems hopeful.

  Tonight he asked, with a pleased chuckle, if we would be interested in hearing the section he had been working on.

  ‘It’s an account of a lively sounding night celebrating St Benedict’s Revels,’ he said. ‘It seems Cuthwin and the Brothers had a somewhat robust evening.’

  We all wanted to hear it. Egbert is making a splendid job of Brother Cuthwin and we have become quite fond of him.

  ‘I’m paraphrasing everything a good deal, as you know,’ Egbert reminded us. ‘Transposing it into today’s phrasing and terms. But I hope I’m retaining the essence.

  ‘We performed a part-song after our supper of roasted meats and mead,’ Cuthwin had written, and even across three centuries his innocent delight reached us. ‘The first song was The Knight’s Lusty Lance, which is always a favourite. I played the Knight, and Brother Francesco took the part of the maiden. There was much cheering, which encouraged us to then embark on The Tinker’s Trusty Rivet. Father Abbot had said earlier this was not an appropriate ballad, but he was not in the room (he seldom joins any kind of festivity or frivolity), so, slightly flown with success (also our own mead), we sang it lustily and well, and everyone joined in the chorus. We kept a weather ear out though, for, as Brother John says, when Seamus Flannery was appointed Father Abbot, he became extremely stern. Most of us feel that, considering Seamus’s past life, this is a clear case of poacher turned gamekeeper, although it’s said there is no prude so great as a reformed libertine. (I would never dare call Seamus Flannery a libertine to his face or, in fact, to anyone else’s face, but I believe it’s perfectly true that his women were legion before he found God.)’

  ‘A libertine,’ said Brother Ranulf who had been listening to Egbert’s reading from his seat by the fire. ‘Dear me, I never knew that about any Father Abbot in Rede Abbas.’

  ‘The actual term Cuthwin originally used to describe Seamus Flannery was somewhat stronger,’ said Egbert. ‘I thought it was better not to make a literal translation of that—’

  ‘Indeed no.’ Ranulf was shocked.

  ‘Go on,’ said several voices, and Egbert resumed reading Cuthwin’s words.

  ‘I have to confess our song was not, perhaps, entirely seemly in certain places. When we reached the verse in which the tinker’s trusty rivet became doubled and the maiden cried for shame, many of the brothers cheered and banged their tankards on the table, and Francesco, much encouraged, leapt on to the table, and began capering along the spilled remains of our meal. I daresay it was inevitable that he should skid in a patch of grease from the roasted meats, but it was unfortunate that he should then tumble headlong into the window at the far end of the refectory – an illustration of St Barnabas, which I have always thought very gloomy, but it did not deserve to be shattered by Francesco while he was portraying the troublesome complexities of the tinker’s rivet.’

  ‘It’s Rabelaisian, isn’t it?’ observed Ranulf, as Egbert paused to look round the common room.

  ‘Beautifully so.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t think we could allow that section to be printed,’ said Ranulf.

  ‘I don’t see why not.’ Egbert, who is somewhat unworldly, turned a puzzled look on Ranulf.

  ‘Well, if you think our own Father Abbot would approve of—’

  ‘I wish I had known Cuthwin,’ I said, hastily. ‘Have you found what happened after the Revels that night, Brother Egbert? Can you read it to us?’

  ‘I have managed a little more,’ said Egbert. ‘So if anyone really does want to hear some more—’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said several voices.

  ‘Three days after our merry-making,’ Cuthwin had written, ‘the Bishop arrived for a Visitation, and there was no concealing the damage inflicted during the entertainments. St Barnabas’s shattered window was there for all to see, proof black and damning as the devil’s hoofprint. Father Abbot had already set a
number of penances – the Bursar later said, crossly, that it was a singular experience to hear Seamus Flannery speaking so severely about extravagance and wanton behaviour. However, he has asked local craftsmen to make a repair, and Job Orchard, the local stonemason, is to create a whole new window frame in stone.

  ‘And now we hear that Thomas Cromwell’s Commissioners are to come to Rede Abbas. This may be a direct result of the Bishop’s Visitation but, whatever it is, it has thrown us into turmoil. Master Cromwell is said to be compiling a survey of the country’s monasteries and their wealth at the request of the King – listing all the gold and silver and valuable possessions some of the monasteries harbour so jealously and acquire so greedily. We believe the Commissioners seize on the smallest excuse to close any monastery and take its valuables for the King’s coffers. There are also shocking tales of laxity and laziness among other monks, although it is whispered that many of these are untrue, and simply excuses to swell the King’s – and Cromwell’s – coffers.

  ‘We are all very worried, although I am sure we are a very temperate House (St Benedict’s Feast excepted) and, in any case, quaffing a few tankards of mead surely could not count as outright debauchery.

  ‘Seamus Flannery goes about with a look in his eyes I should not care to encounter in the night watches. Francesco, always one for a colourful phrase, says there are demons in his soul that he constantly fights.’

  Seamus Flannery again, thought Nell. And also an Orchard. Gerald’s ancestor? It seemed a long way back, but it was an unusual surname, and families did sometimes stay in the same place for hundreds of years.

  She re-read the account, rather liking the sound of Andrew, then saw there were several more pages under the two on display. Presumably someone had simply turned up the documents, thought the deciphered sixteenth-century letter might be of interest, and laid the pages out with that section uppermost. Was it worth trying to read the pages beneath? Nell went back into the library, where Gerald Orchard was frowning suspiciously at what looked like a sheaf of school registers, presumably still in pursuit of the chimera, whatever it was. He looked up, and Nell said, ‘You have some fascinating documents in there.’