Chapter 9
I
JUST AFTER DAWN, when most of the brothers were in the crypt for the service of prime, there were only two people in the dormitory: Johnny Eightpence, sweeping the floor at one end of the long room, and Jonathan, playing school at the other.
Prior Philip paused in the doorway and watched Jonathan. He was. almost five years old, an alert, confident boy with a childish gravity that charmed everyone. Johnny still dressed him in a miniature monk’s habit. Today Jonathan was pretending to be the novice-master, giving lessons to an imaginary row of pupils. “That’s wrong, Godfrey!” he said sternly to the empty bench. “No dinner for you if you don’t learn your berves!” He meantverbs.Philip smiled fondly. He could not have loved a son more deeply. Jonathan was the one thing in life that gave him sheer unadulterated joy.
The child ran around the priory like a puppy, petted and spoiled by all the monks. To most of them he was just like a pet, an amusing plaything; but to Philip and Johnny he was something more. Johnny loved him like a mother; and Philip, though he tried to conceal it, felt like the boy’s father. Philip himself had been raised, from a young age, by a kindly abbot, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to play the same role with Jonathan. He did not tickle or chase him the way the monks did, but he told him Bible stories, and played counting games with him, and kept an eye on Johnny.
He went into the room, smiled at Johnny, and sat on the bench with the imaginary schoolboys.
“Good morning, Father,” Jonathan said solemnly. Johnny had taught him to be scrupulously polite.
Philip said: “How would you like to go to school?”
“I know Latin already,” Jonathan boasted.
“Really?”
“Yes. Listen. Omnius pluvius buvius tuvius nomine patri amen.”
Philip tried not to laugh. “Thatsoundslike Latin, but it’s notquiteright. Brother Osmund, the novice-master, will teach you to speak it properly.”
Jonathan was a little cast down to discover that he did not know Latin after all. He said: “Anyway, I can run fast and fast, look!” He ran at top speed from one side of the room to the other.
“Wonderful!” said Philip. “That really is fast.”
“Yes—and I can go even faster—”
“Not just now,” Philip said. “Listen to me for a moment. I’m going away for a while.”
“Will you be back tomorrow?”
“No, not that soon.”
“Next week?”
“Not even then.”
Jonathan looked blank. He could not conceive of a time farther ahead than next week. Another mystery occurred to him. “But why?”
“I have to see the king.”
“Oh.” That did not mean much to Jonathan either.
“And I’d like you to go to school while I’m away. Would you like that?”
“Yes!”
“You’re almost five years old. Your birthday is next week. You came to us on the first day of the year.”
“Where did I come from?”
“From God. All things come from God.”
Jonathan knew that was no answer. “But where was Ibefore?”he persisted.
“I don’t know.”
