the bruegel boy

"A profound exploration of love, brotherhood, vocation and the power of art to transform lives but also divide and even destroy them."

Published 6th November 2026.

read an extract            

How old are you? Fifteen? That was Bruegel.

‘Nearly sixteen. I was christened at Michaelmas.’

‘But you can’t go home?’

‘No. My eldest brother sent me away, never to return. I vowed not speak of where I grew up, or why I had to leave.’

Bruegel nodded. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But who knows what could happen next, if—’

That was the first time Gil knew Bruegel to stop speaking mid-thought – except that Bruegel’s thinking did not stop, but simply shifted from his tongue to his eyes. Even now, Gil’s face can feel the touch of that gaze, full and bright as the saint’s eye-beams the old limners showed reaching out to touch what they saw.

Bruegel blinked, tossed off the last of his ale, then poured them both some more. ‘I think you would make a good Sint-Michaël. New to the job, uncertain, young – and suddenly you’re in the greatest battle of all. Valiant, and frightened…’

He named the painting The Fall of the Rebel Angels.

***

Three days of walking and two very wet nights, and by the time Gil reached the bridge into Antwerp he was footsore and frightened – but the great gates were shut. Behind them, the bars were thudding into place.

 ‘A little bit of love for the night, young sire?’ called a man in the doorway of one of the shacks clustered on the riverbank. His girl grabbed for Gil’s sleeve. Gil tore his arm away and hobbled for the gatehouse.

There was still a line of light round the little wicket-door, and Gil put a hand to it.

‘Too late!’ a voice bellowed.

‘But please, I’ve nowhere to sleep out here.’

‘Only with a pass,’ the voice said. ‘Stand away now!’ As Gil snatched his hand away the light vanished and the bolts shot home.

The girl plucked at his sleeve, but gently this time. ‘If you don’t want me, sir, try Sint-Michaël’s Abbey. The White Canons. Ferry-oars down the wharf.’

The ferry cost his last stuiver, but the boatman dropped him at the southern corner of the city walls, and nodded him towards a cluster of tall buildings which looked both part and not part of the city.

The Stranger’s Dormitory of Sint-Michaël would admit him for three nights, he was told by the brother porter, and by the time he was standing in a sizeable queue of travellers, beggars, and out-of-work servants, waiting to collect his ration, he could have wept with sheer relief.

‘You look like a lad who’d wish to do God’s work,’ said a low voice at his shoulder. Gil jumped, but it was one of the White Canons. ‘Don’t worry, I’m Pater Frans, and God Himself must have sent you do Him a small service. Would you like to help me? When you’ve eaten, of course?’

In the little prayer cell of the guest dormitory, low-voiced and urgent, Frans explained that the work would take no more than a couple of hours. It wasn’t difficult, although perhaps just a little dangerous… Pater Frans’s head cocked to one side as if to judge Gil, now full of good bean stew and bread. Gil nodded hard. Only a little dangerous, Pater Frans went on: and was that not true of so much of the greatest work a man may do for God?

***

What better witness could Gil cite to Abbot Dom Baudouin – to the whole brotherhood of the Abbey in Altstadgott – that even seventy years ago he longed to be and to do what a religious community requires?

It takes the drop of ink falling from his pen to the desk, and having to be wiped up, to bring him to his senses. He must not write of how, as he stepped out into the street and closed the little door in the Canonry wall behind him, it cut off the faint, sweet sound of the Benedictus that had followed him through the darkness of gardens. For if he started to write of that he’d not be able to stop, but would find himself writing next how under the cover of that darkness he went to the back-door of a print-shop, and was given a package: twelve dozen copies of a print that Pater Frans had commissioned.