Transcript
I’m the Priest-brother here at the preceptory. Though I speak Frankish, I’m English-born – younger son of a minor family — Percy blood, though distantly. The Church was my path, and this is more for me than a parish.
My work is the offices — prayer at the set hours, from Matins before dawn to Compline at dark. Just myself and Brother Hugues now, two voices in a small chapel. We know each other’s rhythms well enough by now. On Sundays I address the wider community — the workers, their families. When the priest at Whitkirk is ill, I cover for him. That service is harder than the brothers’ offices. My Latin’s better than my manner.
I keep the calendar. No bell here, so I track the days by habit and sundial. Edwin relies on me to tell him what’s coming — saints’ days, fasts, Easter. Someone must keep count or the year runs together.
I’m the estate’s only literate man. Correspondence, tallies written into formal records, instructions from the Order — all of that comes through me. I copy when needed. A damaged psalter page, a letter. The scratch of the pen, the precision that quiet work is where I’m suited.
Some of the older villagers still remember walking to Whitkirk for Mass as children, over an hour each way, before the Stapleton chapel was built. The landscape changed within one lifetime. The barn, the chapel, the larger manor — all of it recent.A blessing then, before you go. May you carry what you’ve heard here lightly. Laus Deo.
Jon Eland 