4

 

The sacrist stood in the snow and beat his tabula for the hours of the Divine Offices, and now also for the deaths. One or two a day, at first, then a steady, relentless stream. A clock to tick arrhythmically along with the Liturgy of the Hours. The tally had been fourteen yesterday, up to eighteen by this morning.

Then, after the afternoon Nones service, Prior Lomellini stood. He announced there would be no more observances of the Divine Office until the pestilence had passed. His fear of it had become so great that he could not wait to announce this during the next chapter meeting.

Once again, Niccoluccio’s exclusion from the rumor circles left him caught unawares. He sat aghast, his mouth slack. He broke decorum to look about. The only thing he saw from the other brothers was the strain of the past few days. There was no surprise.

Only once in the monastery’s two-century history had a whole day of services been canceled. That had been when the old refectory had caught fire, and fifty years before Niccoluccio’s time. Days without services was undreamt of.

The others filed out as if in a funeral procession. Niccoluccio lowered his seat lid, but stopped before crossing the door. He stepped aside and waited for the novices to shuffle out, and then turned back toward the altar. He kneeled.

Brother Durante had died two days ago. He tried to hide his fever until he’d collapsed in the refectory. Niccoluccio had helped carry him to the infirmary. Durante had been a wreck of shivering. He’d cried out in pain whenever Niccoluccio’s fingers had strayed close to the oily bubo under his arm.

Durante had been Niccoluccio’s bunk neighbor during their novitiate. They’d been the only pair of novices close to the same age. Niccoluccio hadn’t forgotten the morning when he’d woken up with his hand curled in Durante’s. Durante must have grabbed it in the middle of the night. Durante never spoke about it, though he’d studiously avoided Niccoluccio’s eyes afterward. Niccoluccio had come to the monastery to get away from temptation, but the moment had felt right. Brotherhood was a special kind of love.

And now Durante was gone. Niccoluccio had spent half the last night awake, praying that Durante’s spirit could hear him. Though they hadn’t spoken much since their novitiate, Durante’s silent presence in the church had been as much a fixture of the monastery as Prior Lomellini.

Niccoluccio licked his dry lips. It seemed impossible to focus, even on prayer. His thoughts kept drifting like a wayward novice’s. Eventually, he decided to stop embarrassing himself in front of the altar. He forced himself to his feet.

His knees stung from the floorboards. A symptom of creeping age. He was still young compared to many here, but these past few days, he felt his bony elbows, the pins in his knees, the ache in his back. The parts of the real world that seemed to stop existing during his novitiate had crept into the cloister.

By the time he left the church, a glimmer of snow fell from a bright gray sky. Everyone else had returned to their posts or their cells. A silence deeper than usual permeated the cloister. For the first time in years, Niccoluccio couldn’t take any comfort from it.

The new snow wasn’t deep enough to conceal the sacrist’s footprints by the infirmary, where he beat the news of each new death. Niccoluccio stopped by the door. The past few days, he’d heard endless coughing within, cries of pain. Today, though, he heard nothing. He shuffled quickly past, feeling guilty as he did every time. He couldn’t bear to listen even to the quiet.

None of the dead had so far received funeral services. These were to be delayed until Death had finished reaping his harvest. The closest thing had been in the refectory during their last Sunday meal, when Prior Lomellini had suspended the usual scripture reading and allowed the brothers to speak to each other. Niccoluccio had kept his peace, but listened to the others’ stories about the departed. He’d never known any of them so well.

Now he supposed there would be no more communal meals, either. Prior Lomellini hadn’t announced their suspension, but Niccoluccio doubted any of the brothers would be willing to take the risk. They only entered when the refectory was empty, or even, in violation of one of Sacro Cuore’s oldest rules, smuggled food into their cells.

Niccoluccio didn’t take any food into his cell, nor did he come out in the evening to find dinner. His stomach gnawed at him. He pushed it out of his mind. He didn’t deserve to be comfortable. When it came time to sleep, he lay on top of his covers rather than let himself stay warm beneath them. His attempts to live like normal, as though this would pass, had turned to ash in his mouth. He couldn’t pretend any longer.

He kept careful watch on the shadows on his wall, the play of moonlight through the clouds. During that last supper, one of the novices had claimed a vision of Brother Durante had come to him in the night. Durante had been dead for but a day then, but his spirit claimed to have suffered through Purgatory for what felt like a thousand years. He’d told the novice of the wonders of Paradise that awaited them all past Purgatory. One of the other novices corroborated the story. Niccoluccio didn’t believe a smattering of it.

But just in case, he kept watch.

No spirits visited him during the night, or the day, for that matter. Only the ghosts of names he’d left in Florence, but that had happened before.

The next morning was emptier than any he’d ever seen in Sacro Cuore. Not until these past few days had he realized just how many noises the brothers made: the creaks of floorboards and doors, the shuffles of the elder brothers’ infirm feet, the flutters of scattering birds. All of it had felt like silence, but very different from this stifling blanket. This was a silence of the grave.

There were fresh prints in the snow where the sacrist beat his tabula. Someone else must have died during the night. Maybe more than one. Niccoluccio hadn’t woken.

He turned, and walked again about the cloister, hoping to find something he had missed. Nothing. After too long listening to nothing but his own feet shuffling the snow, it was hard to escape the feeling that the whole of the monastery had died. Struck by a sudden fear that that was in fact the case, he hurried past the sacrist’s footprints, toward the infirmary. His heart juddered with something between shock and relief when he nearly ran into Brother Rinieri, the infirmarer, stepping through the doorway.

Rinieri’s hood rested limply on his head. He was so bald that he’d stopped needing his hair tonsured years ago. His eyes were so tired that he hardly seemed to register the near-collision. “Brother Niccoluccio,” he said. “I’m pleased to find you still alive.”

“No less than I am to see you.” Some of the others had wondered aloud if Rinieri wouldn’t be among the first to fall. He spent more time around the diseased than anybody.

Rinieri trudged toward the refectory. Niccoluccio followed. Usually, smoke trailed out of the kitchen chimney. Today, nothing. Rinieri said, “It seems those of us still here have been left to fend for ourselves.”

“Do you know when Prior Lomellini might lift the suspension of services?”

“Prior Lomellini took ill last night,” Rinieri said.

Niccoluccio couldn’t breathe for a moment. Rinieri looked at him with a trace of sympathy, and said, “I left him in the infirmary. It’s only a matter of time. The laws dictate that we elect a new prior the day after Lomellini passes, but I don’t believe that will be happening. Lomellini will be our last.”

Niccoluccio said, “Sacro Cuore has survived pestilence before.”

“I’ve read the records enough to know that this is very different. We unlucky few are living through the end of the world.”

It took Niccoluccio a moment to process what Rinieri had said. Ever since the pestilence, things seemed to always be moving too fast – as fast as they used to in the outside world.

Niccoluccio said, “Every day in Florence there were people who pronounced the end of the world. They were all wrong. It’s not possible for Man to know these things.”

Rinieri waved beyond the cloister grounds, to the leafless branches looming over the chapter house. “The only question I have is whether all of this will continue without us. Will there still be trees? Moss? Will birds return in the summer? It seems a shame to unravel the whole world because men proved unworthy.”

“You must be mistaken,” Niccoluccio said.

Rinieri patted him kindly on the shoulder. “You’ll see, brother.” He stepped into the refectory. Niccoluccio found himself drawn along as if tied by the wrist.

The refectory was empty. The warm air that usually wafted from the kitchen doors was absent. Niccoluccio rinsed his hands out of habit. Rinieri went last. Encrusted brown sludge sloughed off his hands. Only then did Niccoluccio notice the persistent smell of a lavatory following him.

There was no milk left in the kitchen. The lay farmers had cut contact with Sacro Cuore. Some kind brother had set out jugs of water. There was still bread, at least. Someone was coming in to bake it. Niccoluccio and Rinieri sat together.

Rinieri said, “I’m going to fall asleep soon, whether I want it or not. I don’t know if I’ll wake again. More than one of us has fallen asleep professing to feel fine and woken dead, so to speak.”

“How long have you been awake?”

“Two sunrises. I can’t leave my post. I can’t save them, but I can at least make them more comfortable.”

A wave of guilt tided over Niccoluccio. He’d spent the past few days trying to read and meditate. He swallowed. As if anticipating Niccoluccio’s thoughts, Rinieri said, “The other brothers are probably right not to come near the infirmary. I doubt it will save them, come the end, but it might get them a few days’ reprieve for penance.”

Niccoluccio swallowed. Rinieri could hardly have been more obvious if he’d come straight out and asked. Niccoluccio said, “I wasn’t aware you had no help.”

Rinieri looked at him pointedly. “As I said, I believe the others made good decisions.”

“You should not expect so little from us.” Niccoluccio had to force his next few words out. “I would be glad to help you.”

Rinieri smiled, and turned his attention to his bread. The rest of their meal passed in silence. Niccoluccio couldn’t hear anything over the crunch of the bread’s grit in his mouth. His heart beat as though he’d just offered to follow Rinieri over a cliff.

Rinieri said nothing on the walk to the infirmary afterward. The moment they stepped inside, Niccoluccio was stopped by a stench like nothing he’d encountered before. He couldn’t put words to it. It was overpowering: it reminded him both of a latrine and a garbage pit, but there was a third element to it, too, something musky and citrusy, heavy as compacted soil. It couldn’t be death. None of the brethren who’d died would have been left here long enough to decay. Niccoluccio remained in the shadow of the doorway until Rinieri, eyes gleaming with sympathy, waved him in.

The moment Niccoluccio’s eyes adjusted enough to see the double row of cots, he understood. The smell wasn’t death, certainly. But the brothers resting on them were dying, and they were not doing so prettily. Their habits were stained and crusted yellow-brown with bile. Some of the brothers hadn’t been able to move to use their buckets, let alone the small lavatory in the back.

The infirmary hadn’t been designed for so many men. All three of the original beds in the front room were taken. The rest of the cots had been dragged in from the dormitory.

He hadn’t registered the sounds until the moment after he entered. One of the brothers was muttering prayers in a voice as weak as an old man’s. Another man, whom Niccoluccio belatedly recognized as deaf Brother Francesco, was scrabbling for the bucket beside his bed. A novice had a book splayed over his chest as though he’d been reading it to the others, though he lay unmoving now.

Niccoluccio stopped breathing when he saw Gerbodo. Gerbodo seemed a different man. Sweat layered his forehead, reflecting the daylight coming in through the door. The muscles under his cheeks had slackened. His covers only came up to his chest. Either he had broken decorum by undressing, or Brother Rinieri had undressed him. He was asleep, his left arm above his head, no doubt to give relief to the bean-sized boil in his armpit.

Prior Lomellini lay on the bed farthest from the door, eyes closed and mouth hanging open. His chest rose shallowly. A heavy black lump bulged from under his neck. Niccoluccio swallowed. Brother Rinieri threaded between the beds. He touched his hand lightly to Lomellini’s forehead. He sniffed Lomellini’s breath, and then the bottom of his sheets. He waved Niccoluccio to Lomellini’s bed.

Rinieri said, “We need to move him to the back.” That was where brothers were taken to die. The moment of death was supposed to be private, between the sufferer and God.

Niccoluccio said, “I thought you said Prior Lomellini had just taken ill last night.”

Rinieri looked at him, and didn’t disagree. He just grabbed one end of the cot. Niccoluccio strained to lift the other.

Lomellini’s eyes hung open. He said nothing as Rinieri and Niccoluccio lifted him, only looked at Rinieri with eyes stained red by the strain of vomiting. It was as if Niccoluccio didn’t exist. Niccoluccio at once felt ashamed for the ill thoughts he’d directed at Lomellini. Lomellini had been more political than other priors, certainly. But there was no slyness in his eyes now.

The back room of the infirmary should have been empty, to allow the dying their privacy. There were already two men lying there. Both had shallow bowls of water balancing on their chests. The bowls were the last measure of breath. The water in one rippled gently. The other was completely still.

Niccoluccio didn’t even know the name of the man who’d died. He was a novice, about as old as Rinieri, with an oily forehead and half-parted eyelids.

Time seemed to flow smoothly around the next hours, a stream over pebbles. Niccoluccio was hardly conscious of their happening. He and Rinieri hauled the dead novice out of the infirmary and set him by Sacro Cuore’s small cemetery. Rinieri fetched the shovels, and Niccoluccio joined him in the painful labor of digging deep in the cold ground. By the time they returned, the man beside Lomellini had also died.

When they came back from the second burial, Lomellini was still awake and staring at the ceiling. His eyes were sallow, his skin pale and veiny. He looked twenty years older than he had yesterday. Niccoluccio could not help but be impressed that Lomellini made no sound of distress, though the boil on his neck must have been agonizing. Rinieri called in the sacrist to administer the Last Rites, and to announce the deaths to the other brothers.

After he and Rinieri tended to the other inmates – Niccoluccio numbly following Rinieri’s instructions – Niccoluccio returned to Lomellini with a book of scripture. Lomellini’s eyes remained open, and he breathed shallowly. Niccoluccio pretended not to notice the stains on his covers. He sat on the edge of the nearest cot.

For much of the rest of the night, he read to Lomellini. He kept going after the prior shut his eyes, and stopped only when his breathing became so thin that there was no mistaking the moment.

Niccoluccio retired to the refectory, intending to get a quick meal. He fell asleep at his bench. In the morning, Lomellini was dead. Another brother had taken his cot.

 

Niccoluccio dug most of the graves. The hard soil yielded half an inch at a time, and his bleeding hands stung with every thrust, but he forced himself through it. He had nothing else to give. There were no longer enough of them left to provide decent funeral services.

Whole groups of companions perished. After Brother Francesco died, Niccoluccio went about the dormitory to ask about him. The only one of the brothers who knew him well enough to provide an oratory had died shortly after Niccoluccio discovered him.

Every morning, Niccoluccio and Rinieri carried brothers out of the dormitory. It seemed a miracle that there was anybody left. But the infirmary always had space to accommodate them. The inmates died as quickly as they were brought in.

He and Rinieri worked silently, sincerely. Niccoluccio’s hands chapped and bled, turned black by the soap he and Rinieri used on the inmates’ sheets. They washed and changed everything as often as they could, but it was never enough. Niccoluccio never got used to the smell of sweat and vomit that suffused them. Still, he preferred anything to working with the sick themselves. His suffering was only a distant shadow of theirs. Only Rinieri had the expertise to handle them.

Rinieri had held himself apart from the other office-holders. Niccoluccio only wished he knew anything else about the man. He was already dreading the day that Rinieri, too, would die. Or that Rinieri would hunt in vain to find anyone who could give Niccoluccio’s funeral oration.

Or, worse, that he wouldn’t try.

The monastery would become a cemetery of mute spirits, straining through the snowfall to hear anybody speak of them. In his working trances, he heard the endless peal of church bells across Italy, across the whole known world – a funereal chorus resounding long after anyone was left to hear them.

No. He couldn’t let himself think like that. Sacro Cuore would go on. It was his life. Living or dead, he would always be here. The place was too much a part of him.

Gerbodo lingered longer than Lomellini, but he, too, died. Over the next two days, he was followed by the precentor and almoner, and shortly afterward by the novice-master. All of the monastery’s senior office-holders, barring Brother Rinieri, were dead.

Whoever had had the duty of refilling the refectory’s wash basin had died. Niccoluccio replaced it himself. Every morning, the basin was covered with a thin sheet of ice. The water stung his hands. Shoveling had turned his knuckles into maps of knobby callus and dry, bleeding skin.

After getting his stale bread at nights, he didn’t have the courage or strength to return to the dormitory to listen for coughs and wheezing. He retired to the calefactory, the warming house. It was the only building in the monastery to be allowed a chimney and open fire, a comfort for the elder brothers. The prior before Lomellini, Prior Gianello, had spent most of his dying days there. Men of Niccoluccio’s age were typically not permitted inside. But he couldn’t keep himself from it. Every night, he went through the motions of rekindling the fire while he purged his mind of the day’s losses. The heat soaked into his bones.

Niccoluccio draped himself in front of the fire and wondered if he would wake. But each morning he woke healthy save for the ills his work inflicted on him. His shoulders felt like hot irons, and his hands stung like they’d been boiled, but he never woke with a fever nor black lumps.

The remaining monks kept themselves in their cells, too afraid of each other to emerge for any reason other than necessity. Niccoluccio tried to recount the names of those he knew were still alive, besides Rinieri. Brothers Rainuccio and Arrigheto had left on their mission to the bishop. There had been no word. Beyond that, there were names Niccoluccio had only heard in passing, names he couldn’t attach feeling to. By the time Niccoluccio became familiar with them, it was too late. They’d been brought into the infirmary.

He’d long ago lost track of the number of men Sacro Cuore had lost. He’d buried two dozen with his own hands. That made thirty-five total? Forty? Out of fifty-nine. Sacro Cuore was hollowed out, a shell of stone and wood.

At last, though, the flow of the diseased and deceased began to diminish.

Rinieri began taking walks around the freezing cloister in the morning. Niccoluccio joined him. Niccoluccio had occasionally had trouble with ice lining the cloister walk, but never as much as this year. The brother whose duty it was to clear the walk had also died. He and Rinieri took each step slowly, haltingly.

Rinieri remarked, “We must have angered the Almighty mightily to have this happen during winter. At least in summer we might die with a trifle more comfort.”

Rinieri’s fatalism had never let up. Niccoluccio said, “I’ve always felt there was no more holy a season than winter. The snow stifles sound. It helps keep everything in the cloister silent.”

“Silent evermore,” Rinieri mused. “If the birds and beasts continue on, they’ll enjoy that.”

“Christendom has survived worse,” Niccoluccio said.

Rinieri said, “Christendom cannot survive an angry God. It has never stopped paining me that you will not accept that.”

“I cannot believe our time on Earth is finished.”

“Prior Lomellini had a difficult time accepting his end, before he died. As did many of the others.”

Rinieri hobbled over the next patch of snow-covered ice, slower than usual. Niccoluccio had to take mincing steps to keep from overtaking him. “I didn’t just come to this monastery for the sake of my own salvation. I came to be a part of the Body of Christ, of the Church He built. It has long outlasted all its founders save Him. The work we do here is meant to last centuries.”

“The house Christ built on Earth is long-lasting, but no more eternal than Earth itself. There’s no need to have a house without occupants.”

“Long after we’ve gone, I have to believe that there will still be men walking this cloister, and that the work we’ve done here will continue to help guide them to their salvation.”

“You ‘have’ to believe. You see, even when you pretend it’s not about your desires, it is.”

Niccoluccio shifted. No doubt Rinieri derived a great deal of satisfaction from his hesitation. “Even now, the pace of the pestilence is slowing. For the past two days, now, we’ve had fewer and fewer sick and dying.”

Rinieri gave him a look of the sincerest pity. For the first time, Niccoluccio noticed how red his eyes were. His cheeks were flushed.

“My poor man,” Rinieri said. “Have you counted the heads that have come through our doors?”

Niccoluccio shook his head. “I started working with you too late to start counting.”

“Our work isn’t slowing because the pestilence is leaving us.” Rinieri slid his hood partway back. He brought his fingers to the side of his neck, to the black lump the size of a bean.

Niccoluccio gaped. Rinieri smiled, thinly. “It’s slowing because, very soon, there will be no one left to die.”