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turning his head to look at Madeleine’s cottage—which did not mean he didn’t see it and note the closed air that signalled she was out—he just didn’t turn his head. Mortifying the eyes while still noticing everything was an impossibility that had been required of him from his first days under novitiate discipline. It no longer seemed difficult now.
    Mother Cottingham’s house looked as neat and trim as any in the row. He had instigated a programme of repairs himself, to be done once the harvests were in, but before that Brother Ambrose had been conscientious in his duties and looked after the buildings well. Inside was another matter—what happened indoors was the responsibility of each tenant. Mother Cottingham could no longer manage the housework she might once have done, and he knew from his visits to check for repairs needed that her home was grimier than it could have been, but not too bad. Even so, he did not especially look forward to this call. He tapped on the cottage door and waited respectfully to be invited in. It took the old woman a long time to answer his knock, as he knew it would, but still he waited because that was what she preferred. He noticed as he stood there patiently that her garden had been weeded.
    When at last she opened the door to him, he saw that the room inside looked cleaner and brighter than last time he’d been in it. The floor had been swept and the ledges dusted, the pewterware scoured bright, and the pots set neat on the shelf. Momentarily puzzled, he quickly concluded that the difference between now and his previous visit was that Madeleine had moved in next door. Evidently she had spread a sheltering wing over her aged neighbour, and perhaps it gave her some comfort and filled a void somewhere, for she had loved her mother and so suddenly lost her.
    â€œCome in, lad. Come in and sit thee down.”
    William could think of a hundred and one things he’d rather be doing than whiling away the afternoon in what threatened to be an extended visit. He was on the verge of saying he wouldn’t sit down because he couldn’t stay long, when he remembered Abbot John counselling him earlier in the spring to take the love that ached in his heart for Madeleine and lavish it on those who needed it and otherwise had nobody to love them. He had admired this line of thinking but had so far ignored the advice. With the wound of grief at what he had done Thursday night still open and wet in his soul—the agony of parting from Madeleine forever sent him dizzy with sorrow if he let his mind dwell on it—he thought this might be a good time to allow the love that still overflowed inside him to be channelled in a direction where it might do some good.
    â€œThank you, my lady,” he said therefore, with the gentle courtesy of a knight addressing a queen. Ellen’s sharp glance searched for cynicism or mockery, it being her experience that old women are usually treated more patronizingly than that by such middleaged men as notice them at all, but she saw none on his face. She saw sadness though, the fine-drawn skein of suffering indefinably incorporated and revealed in his features.
    â€œTha looks unhappy. Art tha unhappy?” she asked him bluntly. She had found that though old age brings little to recommend it, one of its few privileges was the advantage of being indulged in speaking her mind. She had given up trying to please others in her late seventies, and nothing caused her to miss the habit or experience the slightest twinge of regret at its cessation.
    She regarded William calmly; he looked lost for words. It was not the monastic way for the brothers to discuss personal matters with anyone outside the community, and she saw that her question embarrassed him a little. That did not trouble her. She loved the abbey, and she loved God, but she did not feel bound herself by the customs of monastic tradition.
    Mother Cottingham had two