Aelfden is tried

Of late Abbot Aelfden had developed an uncanny ability to guess the presence of men who stood just out of sight. At times he even possessed an additional sense warning him that it was a man he did not care to meet. Unfortunately the times always seemed to be those when a meeting was unavoidable.

He put his sociable face back on, as resignedly as a drenched and dripping man might pull on his boots to go right back out into the rain.

“Are you still here, Brother?” he asked. “I thought you had gone away to the dinner.”

“I did not care to,” Father Matthew sniffed.

“Oh? I thought you did, as a rule.”

“I do not care for dinners,” Matthew protested. “I simply observe that a priest must eat, and a lord must feed him. It is therefore simplest if I dine with the Duke. I also observe that there is a little less oath-​taking and maid-​fondling to be seen when I am in attendance.” He smiled at his joke, but smugly, because he thought it true.

Aelfden chuckled, though not at Matthew. “But you must consider, as the Old Man once shrewdly observed to me, ‘If one dams the river, the water still has to go somewhere.’”

“I hope Lord Cynewulf was not referring to any river of blasphemies that might issue from his own mouth,” Matthew said sourly.

“No, he was not. The Old Man is not a particularly blasphemous boy.”

“Perhaps not, but some of his lordship’s friends are.”

Aelfden only sighed, for he could not disagree. On Fridays he gave lessons to a few of the boys, and the pranks of young Haakon and Heafoc were enough to try the patience of a saint, which Aelfden most assuredly was not.

They reached the west end of the cloister, and Aelfden paused with his hand on the handle of the great door. Matthew appeared to be following him to his office, to which he had been going in the hope of solitude and sanctuary.

“Were you looking to speak with me?” he asked.

“Yes, I was, Lord Father, if I may.”

Aelfden pulled the door open and waved Matthew in ahead of himself. “About your newest parishioner?” he asked. “There’s a quandary for you: Sir Selwyn is a river of his own, and you can’t dine at two tables at once.”

“No, it was not about him,” Matthew said peevishly, “but it ought to have been. What example did you set today by marrying those young people in public, quite as if it were a proper thing? When her—condition—scarcely permits her to kneel to be blessed?”

Matthew opened the narrow door to Aelfden’s office himself and stalked through it ahead of the Abbot.

“My intent was to make a ‘proper thing’ out of it,” Aelfden muttered. “It was the King’s decision to celebrate it openly.” He lit the candles slowly to give himself a moment to compose his face again.

“I do not intend to criticize you, of course, Lord Father. I merely make an observation.”

“I thank you.”

Matthew was silent for a moment, but another “observation” soon burst forth.

“If only because of the example it sets the other young maidens! If one only sins with the right young man, one is rewarded with a husband of the rank of knight and a fine house right away, instead of waiting and taking one’s chances against the virtuous girls.”

Aelfden sighed.

Matthew shook his head sadly. “My heart was grieved sore to see Their Royal Highnesses the Princesses in attendance.”

“The elder is already married,” Aelfden reminded him, “and the younger betrothed to an earl. Indeed, if there are any girls who need not resort to such tricks to win a husband, princesses are surely among them. Especially when they are as fair as ours.”

“Lord Father!” Matthew gasped.

Aelfden flopped himself onto his chair like the bag of bones that he was. He had been on his feet for nearly two hours by now, with the celebration of the wedding Mass, as well as its preparation and its aftermath. He still had to ride all the way to Dunellen to bless the bed.

“So I am told,” he sighed. “But I suppose even a priest may be permitted to observe that the Lord has made some women—and some men—comelier than others.”

He could not help but look upon the other man’s face as he said it. Aelfden was certain that no lady had ever said of him that it was “a shame he was a priest”, as he had overheard several say of Matthew.

“I certainly do not,” Matthew protested. “Such ‘observations’ are the first step on the road into temptation. I do not regard the outward appearance of the people around me. Suppose I did! What if only the handsome went to Heaven?” He smiled ironically, and a little smugly, because he knew himself handsome.

Aelfden replied gravely, “Then I am surely damned.”

“Lord Father!”

The Abbot knew the power of the eyes when attempting to engage men’s attention, and now he let them fall closed in the hope of escaping it.

He did not intend to tease the young priest: his words would have brought no more than a snort or a chuckle out of Brandt or Brude, Timothy or Faelan, or even his cousin the King and the other men to whom he might have made such a remark. He did not intend to be irreverent either. Father Matthew simply had a knack for making him seem so.

“Fortunately,” Aelfden murmured, “as you suggest, the Lord does not regard outward appearance either. There is still hope that I will be forgiven my sins, though as for my face…”

He did not complete his thought. This was not Brandt or Brude.

“But I seem to recall that it was not about Sir Selwyn and his lady that you wished to speak with me.”

Matthew’s handsome face brightened. “That is correct, Lord Father. I merely wished to tell you that I have spoken to Sebastien as I promised you.”

Aelfden’s head jerked in annoyance. The mention of a promise kept made it seem a favor granted. Nevertheless he could not protest: Matthew had truly promised it, though Aelfden had never asked him to.

“I do not think we will have any more troubles of that wise,” Matthew confided with a slight smile. “I believe I have made him understand the gravity of his act, and he was regretful and repentant as he ought.”

“Is that so?”

“You see, Lord Father, it is as I said to you: it suffices to know how to talk to him. I observe that he was a gracious and well-​behaved man all the length of our journey, while we were together. I suggested that he has grown bored here, with so little to stimulate his mind—for he is a rather clever man, Lord Father, as you may have noticed.”

“He does give that impression,” Aelfden muttered.

Indeed, he thought it likely that Sebastien was more clever than Matthew realized. He could imagine Sebastien talking circles around the young priest, seeming to agree with every argument while subtly deflating each as it passed.

“He did agree,” Matthew said. “Having been to Rome yourself, you must imagine how dull this court might seem to those of us who have spent years there, or in other great cities.”

“Yes. One does soon weary of elves and dragons.”

Matthew frowned and looked down at his lap to busy himself smoothing out the already neat folds of his robe. Aelfden bit the insides of his hollow cheeks to both punish and silence himself. This sarcasm had been bold enough for even Matthew to detect, but Matthew had a way of bringing it out of him.

When the young priest had finished arranging his robe, he patted his knee and looked up again. Meanwhile the lines of his disapproving face had disappeared as well.

“I have suggested, if he grows tired of studying alone here, that he join His Grace the Duke and myself at supper. His Grace is quite pleased to have a cultivated man at table, and I daresay he would like another. I am of the opinion that it would do the young gentleman some good to be in the company of an elder.”

“If you can convince Sebastien to sit at table with the Duke,” Aelfden muttered, “you will have my admiration. I am convinced he pardons no pranks but his own.”

“Oh, I think I shall,” Matthew smiled. His flawless cheeks were tinted with the pink of self-​satisfaction. “As I said, one merely needs to know how to talk to him.”

“And if you do, then you have my admiration. I do not.”

Matthew smiled in still greater contentment.

He would have to pray for greater forbearance later, but for a moment Aelfden indulged himself in imagining what would ensue when Matthew’s smug naivete came blundering up against Sebastien’s subtlety. He should have wanted the young priest to succeed in taming the young gentleman, but he could only think it might do him some good to fail. At present, Father Matthew was enough to try the patience of a saint.