Philip was dismayed. “But he’s no better than Prior James! Why would the brothers vote for him?”

“Well, they’re suspicious of strangers, so they won’t vote for anyone they don’t know. That means it has to be one of us. And Remigius is the sub-prior, the most senior monk here.”

“But there’s no rule that says we have to choose the most senior monk,” Philip protested. “It could be another one of the obedientaries. It could be you.”

Cuthbert nodded. “I’ve already been asked. I refused.”

“But why?”

“I’m getting old, Philip. The job I have now would defeat me, except that I’m so used to it I can do it automatically. Any more responsibility would be too much. I certainly haven’t got the energy to take a slack monastery and reform it. In the end I’d be no better than Remigius.”

Philip still could not believe it. “There are others-the sacrist, the circuitor, the novice-master…”

“The novice-master is old and more tired than I am. The guest-master is a glutton and a drunkard. And the sacrist and the circuitor are pledged to vote for Remigius. Why? I don’t know, but I’ll guess. I’d say Remigius has promised to promote the sacrist to sub-prior and make the circuitor the sacrist, as a reward for their support.”

Philip slumped back on the sacks of flour that formed his seat. “You’re telling me that Remigius already has the election sewn up.”

Cuthbert did not reply immediately. He stood up and went to the other side of the storeroom, where he had arranged in line a wooden bath full of live eels, a bucket of clean water, and a barrel one-third full of brine. “Help me with this,” he said. He took out a knife. He selected an eel from the bath, banged its head on the stone floor, then gutted it with the knife. He handed the fish, still feebly wriggling, to Philip. “Wash it in the bucket, then drop it in the barrel,” he said. “These will deaden our appetites during Lent.”

Philip rinsed the half-dead eel as carefully as he could in the bucket, then tossed it into the salt water.

Cuthbert gutted another eel and said: “There is one other possibility, a candidate who would be a good reforming prior and whose rank, although below that of the sub-prior, is the same as that of the sacrist or the cellarer.”

Philip plunged the eel into the bucket. “Who?”

“You.”

“Me!” Philip was so surprised he dropped the eel on the floor. He did, technically, rank as an obedientary of the priory, but he never thought of himself as being equal to the sacrist and the others because they were all so much older than he. “I’m too young-”

“Think about it,” Cuthbert said. “You’ve spent your whole life in monasteries. You were a cellarer at the age of twenty-one. You’ve been prior of a small place for four or five years-and you’ve reformed it. It’s clear to everyone that the hand of God is on you.”

Philip retrieved the escaped eel and dropped it into the barrel of brine. “The hand of God is on us all,” he said noncommittally. He was somewhat stunned by Cuthbert’s suggestion. He wanted an energetic new prior for Kingsbridge but he had not thought of himself for the job. “It’s true that I’d make a better prior than Remigius,” he said thoughtfully.

Cuthbert looked satisfied. “If you have a fault, Philip, it’s your innocence.”

Philip did not think of himself as innocent. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t look for base motives in people. Most of us do. For example, the whole monastery already assumes that you’re a candidate and that you’ve come here to solicit their votes.”

Philip was indignant. “On what grounds do they say that?”

“Try to look at your own behavior the way a low suspicious mind would see it. You’ve arrived within days of the death of Prior James, as if you had someone here primed to send you a secret message.”

“But how do they imagine I organized that?”

“They don’t know-but they believe you’re cleverer than they are.” Cuthbert resumed disemboweling eels. “And look how you’ve behaved today. You walked in and ordered the stables mucked out. Then you dealt with that horseplay during high mass. You talked of transferring young William Beauvis to another house, when everyone knows that transferring monks from one place to another is a prior’s privilege. You implicitly criticized Remigius by taking a hot stone out to Brother Paul on the bridge. And finally you brought a delicious cheese to the kitchen, and we all had a morsel after dinner-and although nobody said where it came from, not one of us could mistake the flavor of a cheese from St-John-in-the-Forest.”

Philip was embarrassed to think that his actions had been so misinterpreted. “Anybody might have done those things.”

“Any senior monk might have done one of them. Nobody else would have done them all. You walked in and took charge! You’ve already started reforming the place. And, of course, Remigius’s cronies are already fighting back. That’s why Andrew Sacrist berated you in the cloisters.”

“So that’s the explanation! I wondered what had got into him.” Philip rinsed an eel thoughtfully. “And I suppose that when the circuitor made me forgo my dinner, that was for the same reason.”

“Exactly. A way to humiliate you in front of the monks. I suspect that both moves backfired, by the way: neither reproof was justified, yet you accepted both gracefully. In fact you managed to look quite saintly.”

“I didn’t do it for effect.”

“Nor did the saints. There goes the bell for nones. You’d better leave the rest of the eels to me. After the service it’s study hour, and discussion is permitted in the cloisters. A lot of brothers will want to talk to you.”

“Not so fast!” Philip said anxiously. “Just because people assume I want to be prior doesn’t mean I’m going to stand for election.” He was daunted by the prospect of an electoral contest and not at all sure that he wanted to abandon his well-organized forest cell and take on the formidable problems of Kingsbridge Priory. “I need time to think,” he pleaded.

“I know.” Cuthbert drew himself upright and looked Philip in the eye. “When you’re thinking, please remember this: excessive pride is a familiar sin, but a man may just as easily frustrate the will of God through excessive humility.”

Philip nodded. “I’ll remember. Thank you.”

He left the storeroom and hurried to the cloisters. His mind was in a turmoil as he joined the other monks and filed into the church. He was violently excited at the prospect of becoming prior of Kingsbridge, he realized. He had been angry for years about the disgraceful way the priory was run, and now he had a chance to set all those things right himself. Suddenly he was not sure he could. It was not just a question of seeing what ought to be done and ordering that it should be so. People had to be persuaded, property had to be managed, money had to be found. It was a job for a wise head. The responsibility would be heavy.

The church calmed him, as it always did. After this morning’s misbehavior the monks were quiet and solemn. As he listened to the familiar phrases of the service, and murmured the responses as he had for so many years, he felt able to think clearly once again.

Do I want to be prior of Kingsbridge? he asked himself, and the answer came back immediately: Yes! To take charge of this crumbling church, to repair it and repaint it and fill it with the song of a hundred monks and the voices of a thousand worshipers saying the Our Father-for that alone he wanted the job. Then there was the monastery’s property, to be reorganized and revitalized and made healthy and productive again. He wanted to see a crowd of small boys learning to read and write in a corner of the cloisters. He wanted the guesthouse full of light and warmth, so that barons and bishops would come to visit, and endow the priory with precious gifts before leaving. He wanted to have a special room set aside as a library, and fill it with books of wisdom and beauty. Yes, he wanted to be prior of Kingsbridge.