I arrived at the monastery right on time, as was attested by the hollow ringing of the bells in the carillon. The unearthly quiet, having been broken like a spell, the fathers and brothers were now everywhere evident, crisscrossing the greensward at the center of the monastic buildings.
Some were proceeding to the refectory. Others were strolling to the library. Workers were coming from the fields. Workmen were putting up ladders that could be climbed for pointing brickwork and old stone. Brothers carrying mops and pails were rushing to the dormitory to be sure the floors were cleaned before evening prayers.
Out by the graveyard, I noticed a burial taking place with a small group of religious people officiating over a very private interment that I might have missed if I had focused on the routine scurrying. Seeing that the head monk was one of the concelebrants at the graveside, I wandered back to stand beside him reverently until his work had been completed. He had invited me this afternoon, and I needed to know from him how we were going to proceed.
The burial service continued in Latin. A brother swung a thurible with its fumes of incense spreading like a shroud over the open grave. Three monks in a line maintained an attitude of devout prayer, and their eyes remained fixed on the grave as if it were an icon.
Since we religious are, by our own volition, among the dead already, I supposed that they saw the grave as I did. For us monks, it was our right habitation and goal. The grave was the gateway for the soul, as much a passage as the frail, once-human, decomposing body in the small black box with the golden handles that was ready to be lowered on signal.
When the ritual had been completed, and each celebrant had taken the dibble and scattered a few token pieces of earth on the coffin, the monks gently lowered the coffin into the grave on the suspender straps until it hit bottom. Then, they signaled the diggers to fill the grave with the same earth that had been excavated from it. The lead monk turned to acknowledge me and motioned that we should walk together for a few minutes and talk.
“I’m glad you’ve come, Brother William, for burying the result of a problem does not bury the source of the problem. It happened after vespers yesterday in the scriptorium of the library. We found Brother Anthony, may God rest his soul, naked as the day he was born, sitting by the lectern laughing. He was bleeding profusely from his nether parts and had been doing so for such a long time that the floor under his chair was a pool of blood.”
I had expected a horrific account, but nothing like what the monk recounted. Had Brother Anthony been possessed in some way? Why else would he have been found laughing? I instinctively looked behind us to see the others of the community grouped in twos and threes, darkly muttering among each other. I turned back to the monk and focused on the details of the scene he had imparted to me. He continued his exposition when he thought I had digested his first words.
“In his right hand, like a scepter, he wielded an old kitchen knife. In his left hand, like a little ball of wax, he held his vital parts, which he had severed from himself with the knife. On the lectern was a single page from a manuscript, but the text was impossible to discern because it was covered with the monk’s blood. By the time I had been summoned, he had lost so much blood it was a miracle that he could still sit and hold himself upright. When I appeared before him, he got a wild look in his eyes, raised his knife and plunged it into his heart. Brother Simon tried to stop him from taking that irrevocable action, and he was cut badly in the hand. Brother Simon is in the infirmary now, and I’m told he’ll recover physically. I’m not at all sure any of us will recover mentally.”
“To what do you attribute the unfortunate accident? Surely we have had suicides before.”
“We’ve now had four such suicides in the same place, by the same method, in the last four weeks. We’ve kept this quiet, but the whole monastery is whispering about it now. The talk is of a curse or a ghost, or both in the scriptorium. Whatever it is, it lures young men to the place in the middle of the night and influences them to emasculate themselves and then take their own lives.”
The number of suicides in a brief period was unprecedented, I thought. Indeed, an epidemic was underway. I well understood the monk’s concern. Not only were the victims unfortunate if not damned, but the institution was also in jeopardy. How could His Holiness, the Pope, countenance keeping such an apparently diabolical place open? I was already envisioning a team of exorcists descending on the monastery. For a moment, I saw the future ruin of what today looked innocent enough on the exterior. The green grass, the blue sky with puffy white clouds were replaced in my imagination by a lightning riddled mass of blood red sheets pouring rain upon half an arch and a full graveyard.
“I’m afraid that Brother Anthony will not be the last to suffer. I’ve made an exception to the rule for the burial of suicides to inter these religious in our graveyard. I suppose I should inform my superiors of my actions in this regard, but that is my affair. The reason I’ve summoned you is to discover what is going on and to stop it as soon as possible. Although, the activity of the monastery yard masks a deep unrest and suspicion that ours is no longer a holy place of God, but a sanctum of the Devil.”
“Can you tell me if there is any common thread among the victims that would suggest that they might have acted in collusion?”
“I’ve thought of that possibility, but the four brothers were not in a claque or members of a cabal. They slept in separate quarters, worked in different areas and never associated in private, except in prayer. They all sang in the choir—beautifully, I might add, but they had no connection to each other before they went into orders, and their only firm link is the order of their departure from the earth.”
Though nervous and unkempt, the monk was not an unintelligent observer, and his thoughts were parallel to my own initial suspicions. In religious houses, the relationships of people are well known. I believed the monk when he said the brothers were not involved in a suicide pact together. The monk was observing me closely while I thought about his conjectures. As if reading my mind, he continued with his summation, which led, inexorably back to me.
“I’ve wracked my brain and prayed to find answers, but I’ve found none. That is why you’re here. You have a reputation for investigating certain impingements on the holiest of places. I entrust this task to you. You’ll have your own room and freedom of access to all areas of the monastery for as long as you stay and work on this matter. I only ask that you use the utmost discretion in your investigation. I fear that if the wrong message were sent, my flock would flee in all directions.”
“Do you believe that no word of what has happened has reached outside the monastery?”
“I have no reason to believe that. No one has been permitted to take leave for the last four weeks. Any contact with outsiders has been accomplished by my people in pairs. Everyone knows that we must strive to solve our problem by ourselves.”
“That way, you avoid for a while the public shame and open notoriety.”
“Yes, but private guilt and festering fears may be more dangerous in the long run.”
“Will you appoint an insider to help me with my investigation? That would make things easier, and it would focus my questions and my approach.”
“Brother John, our librarian, is standing by to be your confidant and second. His discretion is unquestioned. He is in charge of both the library and the scriptorium. You may trust him implicitly.”
“And what have you told the others about the reason for my being here?”
“You are here to do research on the history of the scriptorium for a monograph to be published by the Vatican. The recent mishaps are a very minor part of that story.”
“Do you mean to imply that there have been other deaths at the scriptorium?”
“From time to time, yes, there have been other incidents.”
“And do you have a list of those, with the circumstances of each?”
“Brother John has everything you need. When would you like to begin work?”
“I will start right away after you give me a letter authorizing me to make whatever contacts I choose in the performance of my duties.”
“I have your letter of authorization right here. Take it. You may, of course, dine with us in the refectory and pray with us in the chapel at the canonical hours. We welcome you to participate however you like in the life of our monastery.”
“Let’s hope I won’t be participating as Brother Anthony did last evening. Right now, I’ll beg your leave and proceed to the library to see Brother John.”
In the library, I found Brother John was reviewing the replacement of the volumes that had recently been drawn for reading at the oak tables that comprised the reading room. He told me that too often monks had returned the books improperly, so he had instituted a new rule that only he would restore all volumes to their proper places. That way no book would be lost by misplacement.
I asked him whether we could talk somewhere privately, and he led me into a small conference room in back of the head table at the front of the room. When he closed the door behind us, I knew it was sound proof. We could, therefore, talk candidly.
“What can you tell me about the recent death of Brother Anthony?”
“Yesterday morning, I opened the library at six o’clock, as I always do. I then put my things in order and went to open the scriptorium. The door was still locked, but when I opened it I saw Brother Anthony sitting at the lectern laughing with that knife and his severed genitals. I asked him what he was doing, and he only smiled and held up his two hands.”
This account accorded with the monk’s, but the monk might have been parroting what this first observer had reported. He continued describing the horrendous scene in a matter-of-fact manner.
“Blood was everywhere, and I might have tried to help the man, except that I would have contaminated the scene. Instead, I called for help. Brother Anthony passed out and was taken to the infirmary. He may have died in the scriptorium. He may alternatively have died at the infirmary. I made a careful record of what I found in the scriptorium after his body had been taken away. I’ll show you what I wrote in due course.”
“I’m told that Brother Anthony is not the first person you’ve found in the same attitude and that all the others died in the same way as he did.”
“Yes. Four have died in four weeks. Then, of course, there are others. Many others. I made a list that I’ll share with you. Our records indicate that every decade, we have a spate of incidents exactly like Brother Anthony’s. Looking back to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, this has been so.”
I was now fully engaged by the longevity of the problem. I began to think I might be able to eliminate all living suspects and focus entirely on enduring forces as the root cause of everything that had happened in the scriptorium.
“Go on.”
“No human agency has ever been associated with what happened in the scriptorium. No common thread connects the victims of these horrible crimes. Always the deaths have come in fours. Always after the fourth death, someone like you has been called to help. Nothing has ever been discovered to unravel the mystery. I’m glad you’re here to help us. I want to give you every chance of success, but I don’t know how I can be of any help to you.”
“Please give me copies of all your records of these suicides. Judging from what you’ve just said, I’d guess the number of deaths would approach four times the number of decades the monastery has been active and in service.”
“If you have copies of records written by the investigators, I’d like to have those as well.”
“You’ll have copies of all the documents that exist. I’ll also give you a tour of the library and the scriptorium right now if you like.”
I found the library the same as that at any other monastery of the order. The scriptorium, which had not been used in generations, was also very much like other scriptoria I have surveyed, except for the chalk lines that showed the extent of the blood that had flowed out of Brother Anthony’s body onto the floor beneath the lectern.
The librarian had cleaned up the area, so it was difficult for me to imagine what he had found yesterday morning. When I had seen everything that was immediately apprehensible, I asked to see any secret compartments, trapdoors, alcoves and trick accommodations. Brother John told me that, as far as he knew, there were none such.
“You said that you found the door to the scriptorium locked from the outside yesterday morning?”
“Correct. I had to get the iron key on my large ring to unlock the door.”
“And you locked the door the night prior, after assuring that no one had been locked inside?”
“I followed the written procedures to the letter, just as I had done the previous three times. In each case, I was caught totally by surprise as I entered the scriptorium. On the first table under the lectern, the victims had placed their neatly folded outer garments, and then over those, their undergarments. The knife must have been concealed under their outer garments. Did they tell you that the knife used was the same knife for all four men?”
“No. That information is new to me. Where can I find that knife?”
“Brother Carlo in the refectory can show it to you. Let’s walk over there and find him. It is my supper time anyway.” Brother John then locked the scriptorium and the library and led me to the refectory.
Brother Carlo, who broke off temporarily from his mealtime tasks, laid the knife in my hands as if it were a poisonous viper. He was visibly afraid of handling the weapon that had taken four lives in quick succession. I was impressed with the brother’s fear, and I felt special warmth in the handle of the knife as if it were alive. I asked whether I could take the knife with me, and the brother seemed relieved that I had asked to do so. Brother John remained at the refectory, while I returned with the librarian’s master ring and keys to the scriptorium.
The sun was descending, and its light was falling in the scriptorium, so I lighted a candle there and sat down at the first table to contemplate the facts I had learned. I examined the knife in the candlelight and the scriptorium door’s key as well. Both were warm to my touch. I listened intently and opened my mind to associations; however, the silence in the scriptorium was preternatural but engaging. It seemed to bespeak a spirit of great emptiness, loneliness, and mystery.
I took the scriptorium key in my left hand and raised the knife slowly in my right hand. Their heat increased, and I felt a cloying in my right hand as if the knife were trying to fuse itself with my hand. Simultaneously, I felt the key shift its balance and caused my left hand to migrate in the direction of the scriptorium door. I had to make a great effort to release both hands at once.
The key with the ring and the knife clattered on the table, but they would not lie still. The key and knife aligned themselves with a vanishing point in the corner of the room. I took the candle in my right hand and moved to the corner, where the two lines converged.
As I moved, the candle guttered against the candle’s wick. A breeze, emanating from the corner of the scriptorium, was affecting the flame. I searched the corner with the candle to determine where the breeze came from. A small fracture line, no larger than the width of a fingernail, seemed to be the source. I returned to the table and lifted the knife to prise around the area where the breeze blew through the plaster wall. The knife seemed to wield itself as it found a way into the fissure. It twisted this way and that, until I saw the plaster surface drop in chunks and powder, revealing a keyhole.
The knife worked around the keyhole until it was entirely free from the plaster case in which it had been set. I went back to the table and retrieved the key ring. The scriptorium key I had used to enter this room was not the key that fit the lock in the wall. Instead, it was a smaller key, so encrusted with rust, that I did not think it could possibly work a lock. Once I had inserted that key, the lock turned as if by its own accord. I heard a snap, and the floor beneath me fell through.
I fell with the floor onto a flat surface of stone four feet beneath the scriptorium’s floor. Fortunately, I had not been harmed by the fall. Reaching up to fetch the candle, I saw that the floor through which I had fallen, was apparently a trapdoor. In the area around me, below the upper floor, were large openings that contained twelve ancient coffins. My candle threatened to blow out on account of the breeze, which had intensified because of the wider aperture I had created.
I ran the candle along all sides of the opening to understand where the breeze came through, and it seemed to come through cracks in the stone floor itself, which must, I deduced, cover another enclosure below it. In a moment of inspiration, I took the knife by the handle and waved it along the area where the coffins lay. It gravitated like iron to a magnet that was a single coffin with the label: “Fra. Angelico.” If I had not pulled back with considerable force, the knife would have stuck fast to that coffin. I believed I now had enough information to push my investigation along new lines.
I examined the trapdoor mechanism for the latch that held the false floor in place and discovered a rope that allowed a person on the level above to raise the trap door and, simultaneously, to use the key to fasten it in place. After a number of futile attempts, I managed to pull the trapdoor into place from the scriptorium floor. I then pulled the key from the formerly hidden lock.
The flooring now having been restored, I returned to the table and contemplated the tokens and the mechanical sequence I had followed to find the secret crypt. I knew I had to get to the monk who had summoned me to give him my new intelligence, but I found that the scriptorium door was now locked from the outside, and I could not use any of the keys to open the door.
My candle blew out, leaving me in total darkness. I sensed that the breeze was increasing in both force and temperature. It was becoming extremely hot in the room. I sweated profusely and was inclined to remove my cassock when I realized that each monk who had emasculated himself had removed his clothing before doing the deed that ultimately ended his life. I laughed out loud when I made the connection, and I realized that my laughter was probably very much like the laughter that the Brother Anthony had exhibited when he had been found.
I carefully set my candle down and groped for the knife, which I held in my right hand away from my body, and with my left hand, I groped at my vitals to assure that they were still attached to my body. I was relieved to find my genitalia intact, but my right hand felt a violent force, and I had to drop and roll to avoid the knife from sweeping the area where my vitals had been only a second before.
There was no human agency working against me: of that I was sure. The powers that were trying to undermine my confidence were the hot breeze, which now burned like a black flame, and the hot knife, which wanted to melt my hand while guiding it home to emasculate me. As I rolled in contention with the breeze and the knife, I heard the key ring with the keys fall with a clatter on the floor and slide toward me. With my left hand, I struggled to find the keys, and when I did find the ring, I rolled toward the corner, where I had uncovered the hidden keyhole.
There was no reason for me to repeat the ritual of the key and the trapdoors, except that I had no alternative. As I fell through the trapdoor onto the floor below the scriptorium, I lost control of the knife and heard it strike home against metal. I ran my hand across the area where the magnetic coffin lay, and I discovered that the knife had stuck to it. Try as I might, I could not free the knife from the coffin, but I reasoned that now I was not at risk to be self-emasculated. I also sensed that the violent heat of the breeze had abated. Instead, the breeze now blew cool, and it was becoming uncomfortably cold. I felt a chill because of my sweat-drenched cassock, but I resisted removing it.
I resolved to lie on the floor below me and wait. The music of the breeze through the stone floor below me lulled me and finally put me to sleep. There, I must have lain until morning, when Brother John, the librarian, found and awakened me. My patron came and expounded on the cruel story of Brother Angelico, the first librarian and master of the scriptorium archives, and owner of the knife that now clung to his coffin.