The Dalwich Desecration (32 page)

“I am not a physician,” Brother Silsbury reminded in a tone more harsh than seemed necessary.

“I am well aware,” Colin allowed with the flash of his own bit of curtness. “Yet the good brother here seems quite coiled, which, as I remember with my own mother's sufferings, is not good. So tell me, Brother Silsbury, is there any
particular
disharmony that picks at the binds of your brotherhood?”

“Really, Mr. Pendragon. You seem determined to find something untoward when no such crisis exists.” To his credit, Brother Silsbury actually managed to force a slight snicker though no one else joined him.

“Then why were you so determined to keep me from the abbot's personal papers and Bible?”

“I showed them to you!” he fired back, the offense thick in his voice. “I gave you access to all of them the second time you came to the infirmary.”

“And so you did.” A gracious smile eased onto Colin's face for just a moment and I knew he was finally stroking the spine of what he had been after all along. “Yet you proscribed time limits and restrictions, and until Father Demetris returned and forced you to do so, you had no intention of letting me study the abbot's most personal papers at length. Instead you gave me some twaddle about needing to review them first yourself, which would defeat the purpose of my looking at them entirely if you chose to redact or omit pages.” If Brother Silsbury intended to respond he was not given the chance as Colin quickly turned on Brother Clayworth, whose thin, well-lined face seemed to grow gaunter as Colin singled him out. “What have you to say, Brother Clayworth? You are one of the most senior members of this brotherhood. In fact, your running of the brewery provides the lifeblood from which this monastery runs. I cannot believe that you would be unaware of a powerful dissent amongst your fellow members.”

“It was nothing at all as you seek to make it . . .” he blurted out before quickly ceasing and rubbing at his eyes.

“It . . . ?! ” Colin seized the word, repeating it slowly, kicking the proverbial door wide that poor Brother Clayworth had inadvertently cracked open.

“Abbot Tufton struggled with doubt after the
Codex Sinaiticus
was found,” Brother Clayworth answered, his voice slow and soft, his eyes pinned on his hands resting on the table in front of him. “So many thousands of changes to our Bible. A book we had thought sacrosanct. It was hard for many of us to accept. It is why Abbot Tufton went to Egypt in the first place.” Brother Clayworth looked pained, his white hair framing the colorlessness of his face. “I think for myself the most shattering thing to learn was that the last twelve verses in the canon of Mark were not even part of the original text. They were added much later.” He shook his head. “It changes so much of what we thought we knew about the Resurrection. . . .” He fell silent.

“I cannot sit for this,” Brother Silsbury spoke up into the stillness. “These were private struggles of our abbot's and are most certainly not meant to be bandied about like some sort of fodder. Do you mean to condone this conversation?” He turned an outraged glare onto Father Demetris, who quickly averted his eyes, gesturing for Colin to continue nevertheless.

“Did you discuss your abbot's doubts with him?” Colin looked back at Brother Clayworth.

“Of course. As Brother Morrison has already told you, I am certain most of us here did.” He nodded but still did not remove his gaze from his folded hands. “I reminded him of Proverbs 3:5—‘
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart . . .
' ”

“‘. . .
and lean not unto thine own understanding,
'” Colin finished for him with a slight nod. “And it is my belief that your abbot very much wanted to follow that advice as that particular proverb was included in the last communication Abbot Tufton had with the bishop.”

“Through God's grace I know Abbot Tufton had been healing spiritually,” Brother Clayworth said, glancing around at his assembled brothers as though looking for agreement, of which I saw none. “And then those two women released those accursed photographs of the four excised gospels they had just found in that same blasted abbey in Egypt. . . .”

“The Smith sisters,” Colin supplied. “Which appears to have reignited your abbot's questions . . . and doubts . . .”

“There are no
doubts
for a man of true faith,” Brother Morrison rumbled into the conversation, his craggy face matching the finality with which he spoke. “If believing were easy, there would be no need for men like us.”

“Are you suggesting your abbot was not a man of true faith?” Colin asked. But he got no further reply, and after a moment his lack of doing so began to invoke the response he seemed unwilling to give.

Obviously content with the inference of the protracted silence, Colin turned his attention toward Brother Bursnell. Even with his pleasing features and dark blond hair, he suddenly looked every bit as gaunt and strained as the rest of his colleagues. I wondered at the change in him since our first meeting in the library, but could do nothing to explain his evident hindrance to our investigation beyond the growing feeling that he was somehow involved in the abbot's murder. And if not, then he surely knew who was.

“I know you have had no success in learning the whereabouts of your abbot's Egyptian journals,” Colin said with resignation. “It is a pity as they would seem the most likely place where he would have detailed his misgivings.”

“It is not for lack of effort,” came Brother Bursnell's cautious reply.

“Is that so?” Colin tipped his head to one side as though considering the younger monk's words with some measure of skepticism, as I well knew he was. “Because I was able to find them in only the second place I looked,” he announced as he flicked his eyes to me and gave a single nod, the assembled monks instantly beginning to rustle and glance about at one another.

None of the men spoke as I stood up and reached beneath my coat, extracting the rolled cummerbund from its hiding place beneath my suspenders at the crux of my back. Colin had already reached me by the time I held the small package in my hands, so I turned it over to him and quickly retook my seat. As Colin made his way back to the front of the room I became aware of the lingering stares of Brother Clayworth and Brother Bursnell watching me. It felt almost as though I had betrayed them in some fashion, and I wondered at the depths of dissension within this group of men.

“This is what remains of your abbot's Egyptian journals,” Colin was saying as he freed the small, blackened books from within the cummerbund. “I found them last night in the incinerator behind the infirmary. It would seem someone had a mind to destroy them,” he added unnecessarily, the two books heavily charred with only small amounts of writing legible on the innermost pages. “And yet it is enough. Enough to see tortured musings about the many manuscripts found in Saint Catherine's Monastery, most especially the
Codex Sinaiticus.
He also makes mention of the non-biblical testaments brought back from the White Monastery in Egypt. Though they remain unrecognized by the church, they still clearly left him with needling doubts.

“All of it bore out the proof of Man's hand everywhere amongst the words that were said to belong to God. The thousands of changes, excisions, errors, and discrepancies that threatened the very foundation upon which you and your abbot have dedicated your lives. The abbot's writings make plain his torment not only for himself, but for all of you as well.” He set the savaged books onto the table in front of Father Demetris and cast his eyes to Brother Bursnell again. “You did not look for these journals because you already knew they had been cast to the flames.”

Brother Bursnell looked stricken, and though I had always thought him a handsome man I could see no traces of it now. “I did not know any such thing. They had been borrowed from the library and I had no reason to believe they would not come back in due course.”

“Such a banal answer,” Colin sniffed as he moved down to where Brother Hollings was sitting. The young man looked almost as if he was sleeping, his head bowed forward and his eyes clamped shut, with his straight ginger hair dangling about his face like a veil. But as I continued to stare at him I noticed that his lips were moving rapidly. At first I thought perhaps he was whispering something to Brother Green, who was seated beside him, but I quickly realized that he was, in fact, reciting a prayer.

“I am sorry that you have been drawn into all of this,” Colin said as he reached the young monk, dropping a hand on his shoulder and causing him to jump slightly and instantly draw his head up, abruptly ending his prayer. As we all watched, Colin leaned forward and brought his lips nearly to Brother Hollings's ear. “May I ask you to do something for me that I know you will find distressing?” he asked barely above a whisper.

The poor lad blinked repeatedly and I felt unaccountably sorry for him. He looked pitiable as he sat there, not daring to glance up at Colin but rather holding his gaze on the tabletop in front of him as though his very existence depended on his doing so. “What . . . ?” And it was only because I could see his lips that I knew what he had said.

Colin's expression remained flat and unreadable, his voice steady. “Will you please lower your cassock to your waist? You needn't stand up.”

Brother Hollings did not move and I was fairly certain that he must have ceased to breathe as well. Why Colin would ask such a thing of a young man we both knew to be inordinately shy I could not understand.

“What is he saying? What is the meaning of this?” Brother Morrison blasted from the far side of the table before turning to glare at Father Demetris. “I insist you put a stop to this nonsense immediately.”

“This is the first step to setting your spirit free.” Colin continued to coax Brother Hollings, as though Brother Morrison had not even spoken a word. “It is the only thing I shall require of you.”

I was certain Brother Hollings would never consent to doing what Colin was asking, but to my amazement the young man quite suddenly reached up and, with quivering hands, undid his collar. It took less than a breath before he was lowering the top of the garment, and at first I could not understand what was being revealed beneath. Still, neither I nor any of the other monks averted our eyes and, in a minute, I saw that Brother Hollings was wearing a mid-sleeve, tight black undergarment woven of animal hair. A hair shirt. And in that moment I understood.

“Oh Christ.” Brother Morrison pushed himself back from the table as though the garment itself might sully him in some way. “You bloody ass. You have the conviction of a toad. You are a disgrace to this abbey.”

“Wait a minute . . .” Brother Silsbury interrupted, his eyes moving between Brother Morrison and Brother Hollings. “I don't understand. Where did you get that, Brother Hollings? Whoever told you to wear such a thing?”

It took only an instant for the young man's eyes to shift to Brother Morrison.

“
John Tufton was a goddamn heretic!
” the elderly monk roared, his face turning crimson with his fury. “There are
no
doubts for a man of true faith,” he spat his earlier conviction again. “He would have polluted this entire brotherhood with his sacrilege. Brother Hollings did the Lord's work by removing that demon's tongue and throwing it to the Hell fires.”

“Brother Hollings?!” Brother Silsbury lurched in his seat, turning to stare at the young man. “Oh, Rupert . . . no . . .”

“Brother Morrison said I was called to it,” he answered in a single breath, stabbing his hands to his face and beginning to weep. “He said I must do whatever the Lord needed me to . . .” His voice was so rough with tears it was nearly impossible to hear what he was saying.

“ ‘
If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father,'
” Brother Morrison howled as he heaved himself to his feet, “ ‘
then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst!'
Do any of you even recognize the word of God anymore?!”

“You have perverted His intent.” Brother Silsbury rose to his feet, his cheeks flush and his face as pale as milk. “You have dishonored us all and ruptured the soul of this poor boy.”

Brother Hollings cried out through his fingers and slid from the bench to the floor, his face slick with tears as a clutch of hysteria gripped him. I thought to go to him, to try and console him in some way, but what did I understand of the depths of his belief or the surety of his faith that had propelled him to follow the distorted convictions of his elder monk? So I was profoundly relieved when I watched large, ponderous Brother Green awkwardly lower himself to the floor and wrap his arms around the young man.

“God has forsaken the bloody lot of you,” Brother Morrison was growling as he straightened his cassock, staring down at the quivering form of Brother Hollings with obvious distaste. “
The bloody lot of you!
” he repeated. And then he turned and began to move toward the exit as though what he had said should be enough.

“You incited a horrible, brutal murder.” Colin spoke quietly as he stepped in front of the man.

“I have severed the head of the asp and left the tail to Hell,” he spat.

“Brother Morrison . . . Robert . . .” Brother Clayworth stood up, his pallor gray and his eyes as flat as death. “You have lost your way, but God does not forsake you. . . .”

The elder monk spun on him with surprising deftness. “Do not presume to judge me,” he sneered. “I am a soldier of the Lord. How could you understand that, you besotted wretch? How could any of you understand?”