He took his last breath in 1153 at the age of sixty-three and in near-record time he was canonised when, in 1174, Pope Alexander III made him Saint Bernard. The honour both thrilled and saddened his brother, Barthomieu, who was still troubled to live in a world without Bernard’s weighty presence.
On the occasion of his brother’s sainthood, Barthomieu journeyed to Clairvaux with Nivard, now his sole surviving brother, to pray at Bernard’s tomb. They did so with trepidation. Would any of Bernard’s contemporaries at Clairvaux be alive and remember them? Would their secret be exposed?
They thought not, but in the event some old monk might look them over suspiciously or try to engage them in conversation, they would remain aloof and would keep their heads cloaked in hooded anonymity.
This was an exchange they would not entertain:
‘Good monks, you remind this old man of the brothers of Saint Bernard! I met them once, a great many years ago.’
‘We are certainly not these men, brother.’
‘No, how could you be? They must be dead or if not, they would be in their eighth decade!’
‘And as you can see, we are young men.’
‘Yes, to be young again. How marvellous that would be! But still, you sir are the image of Barthomieu and you sir are the image of Nivard. My old mind must be playing tricks.’
‘Let us get you out of the sun, brother, and bring you some ale.’
‘Thank you for that. Tell me, what did you say your names were?’
No, they would not permit that conversation.
Their secret was closely held. No one outside the tight confines of Ruac Abbey knew. Over the years, the abbey had involuted, turning increasingly inward, an island unto itself. Partly, this was due to their doctrinal shift towards Cistercianism, in homage to the teachings and filial ties to the ever-more influential Bernard. The outside world held only temptation and sin. Bernard taught that a good monastic community needed only the sweat of its members to tend to earthly needs and heavenly prayers to Christ and the Virgin Mary to preserve them spiritually. But in increasing measure, the monks at Ruac were losing synchronicity with their secular brethren at Ruac village and for that reason, they needed to tuck themselves away.
Once a week, sometimes twice, they would brew their Enlightenment Tea and retire to the solitude of their cells or, if the evening was fine, a blanket of ferns beneath a favourite oak. There they would drift away to another place, another time, another plane, one which they were certain, brought them closer to God.
For a time, Barthomieu had fretted over Bernard’s hostility. His distant words were still fresh. ‘The Devil visited evil upon us last night. Do you have any doubt of this?’
He had waggled an accusatory finger. Wicked! Wicked!
Bernard was a supremely learned man, infinitely more so than he. With Abelard he shared the honour as the most intelligent man Barthomieu had ever known. Popes turned to him to settle disputes. Kings. But in this matter, as Barthomieu ultimately convinced himself, he was in the right – it was Bernard who was short-sighted.
Nothing about the tea robbed Barthomieu of his ardour for Christ. Nor did it sap his resolve to pray and work towards spiritual purity. In fact, it increased his physical and spiritual vitality. He awoke every morning to the timbre of chapel bells with love in his heart and a spring in his step. And they bore their forays into distemper stoically enough, taking the bad with the good, and endeavouring not to cause each other harm.
He and Jean the infirmarer and herbalist preached the virtues of the tea among the abbey’s monks and soon it was widely used by all as a vitality tonic and spiritual chariot. The monks did not talk freely about their personal experiences but on the days large batches were prepared, they lined up eagerly for their rations. Even the abbot held out his personal chalice before scurrying off to the privacy of his abbot house.
And as the years went by, Barthomieu and the others noticed something creeping up on them, almost imperceptible at first but inescapable in the fullness of time. Their beards were remaining black or brown, their muscles stayed taut, their eyesights stayed keen. And in the delicate matter of their loins, despite their vows of celibacy, they retained the extravagant potency of their youth.
From time to time the monks of Ruac had need to do commerce with outsiders or perchance they would meet a Ruac villager out on a ramble. It was during these encounters that the realisation eventually dawned. Time was claiming the outsiders but was not visiting itself upon the monks.
Outside the monastery, people were growing older.
They were not.
It was the tea, there was no doubt.
It became something to be jealously guarded. Nothing good could come from exposing their practice to outsiders. These were uneasy times and charges of heresy flew easily. Yes, there were rumours. There were always rumours about the secretive doings inside an abbey’s walls. The whispered speculation from villagers who lived near an abbey usually turned to debauchery, drunkenness and the like, even black arts from time to time. And yes, there were rumours in Ruac about monks who never seemed to die, but they stayed as just that – rumours.
So they hid themselves away, and when that became untenable, as when some of them were obligated to travel to the Priory of St Marcel on the occasion of Pierre Abelard’s death vigil, they hid their faces as much as possible. At his deathbed, Barthomieu was forced by dint of his devotion and respect to his brother Bernard, to reveal his secret, only to him.
Bernard once again was furious and in private, railed against the tea and its inherent affront to the laws of nature. But, for the sake of his sole-surviving brothers, he swore an oath to take the secret with him to the grave, as long as Barthomieu and Nivard agreed never to see him again.
And painfully, that bargain was struck. That was the last time Barthomieu saw Bernard in life.
Nivard, the youngest of the six brothers from Fontaines, came to Ruac to join Barthomieu in a circuitous fashion. There were two traditional family paths that he might follow: the priesthood or the sword. At first, he chose neither.
Two brothers, Gerard and Guy had fought for the king. The others, Bernard, Barthomieu and Andre had donned the habit. Andre died a young man, struck down by the pox during the first harsh winter at Clairvaux Abbey. Gerard and Guy left the King’s arms and came to Clairvaux when it was established. They took the cloth but soldiering never left their spirit. So it was a matter of course that following the Council of Troyes in 1128, they would become Knights of the Church. And when the Second Crusade began, they slipped on their white mantles with red crosses and joined their fellow Templars in the ill-fated raid on Damascus. There they fell under the deadly swarm of Nur ad-Din’s archers and were lost in a melee of blood.
As a young man Nivard was pious and hoped to follow his famous brother Bernard to Clairvaux but that was before he laid eyes on a young woman from Fontaines. Anne was a commoner and the daughter of a butcher. His father was livid, but Nivard was so smitten by the shapely, cheerful girl that when he was not with her he could not eat, sleep nor pray in earnest. Finally, he forsook the noble traditions of his family and married her. Cut off from the munificence of his father, he became a lowly tradesman and apprenticed himself to his father-in-law in a offal-filled butcher’s stall near the market place.
Three years of happiness was wiped away when the plague came to Fontaines and Nivard lost both his wife and infant child. He became a despondent rover, a drinker and an itinerant butcher and found himself in a godless haze in Rouen where, in 1120, in a stinking tavern smelling of piss, he heard of a position as a butcher on a new sailing ship. It was called the White Ship, the greatest vessel ever built in France. It was deemed so reliable and mighty that on a calm November night, it set out from Barfleur carrying the most precious of cargoes. On board was William Adelin, the only legitimate son of King Henry I of England, and with him a large entourage of British royals.
Navigation errors were made – or was it sabotage? It was never known. Near the harbour, the ship was steered into a submerged rock which tore through the hull. It quickly sank. Nivard was deep in the holds, fortified for his maiden voyage by wine, clad in butcher’s ramskins. He heard the cracking timbers, the screams of the crew, the whoosh of the incoming water and the next thing he knew the ship was gone and he was all alone in the dark sea, bobbing in his buoyant ramskins. The next morning a fishing boat plucked him from the channel, the only survivor. A hundred were lost. The heir to the throne of England was gone.
Why was he saved?
That question perplexed Nivard, nagged at him, caused him to foreswear strong drink and led him back to God. His embarrassment over his youthful transgressions prevented him from venturing to Bernard’s gate at
