It wasn’t until after Monday’s meager supper and before the service of Compline that Father Fortis was able to find Brother Elias. The old monk frowned at his guest before admitting him into his room. Looking around at the newspapers and file folders piled high on the floor, Father Fortis wondered if the librarian had thrown anything away since his arrival at St. Mary’s. The room’s peculiar odor seemed to come from the tabby cat that rubbed against Father Fortis’s leg.
“Something I can do for you?” Brother Elias asked, his eyebrows darting up and down. Without waiting for an answer, he shuffled to a table and sat before the laptop computer. The monk rapidly tapped a few keys and squinted at the screen.
How odd, Father Fortis thought, that one of St. Mary’s oldest monks would be so proficient with computers.
“I’d like to ask you about something you said at the meeting with the police,” Father Fortis said.
“Oh, did I say something interesting?” Brother Elias grunted as he pointed toward a chair.
Father Fortis removed a precariously stacked pile of folders before sitting down. The adobe walls of the room were bare except for a simple crucifix on one wall.
“You said that St. Mary’s has enemies,” Father Fortis said. “I’d like to know more about that.”
The old monk glanced from the screen to his visitor. “Why? What business is it of yours?”
“We have some similar problems of our own back in Ohio,” Father Fortis said. It was a lie. The Amish and Old Order Mennonites who surrounded St. Simeon’s had been gracious neighbors, leaving the monks alone. The Amish way of life, monastic in its own way to most Americans, drew attention away from the Orthodox monks chanting and beekeeping farther back in the woods.
Brother Elias turned back to the screen. He was about Father Linus’s age, suggesting the two had probably known each other for a long time. Maybe too long, Father Fortis thought, judging by the friction between them. Linus had been ordained a priest, while Elias had chosen to remain a brother. Or had he been passed over?
“Your community’s problems aren’t ours,” the old monk grunted.
“I disagree. Monasteries all over the world have quite a bit in common.”
A bony finger shot up toward heaven. “Wrong! We’re not two different baseball teams,” Brother Elias snapped back. “There’s our church and yours.”
So that was it, Father Fortis thought. The librarian despised him because he wasn’t Catholic.
“You scholars are all the same,” Elias said in disgust. “It’s not good enough being a monk. You think your precious articles and books can change the past. Ha!” The monk’s face was a battlefield, columns of skin moving angrily from neck to forehead as he spoke.
“You mean the gulf between our two churches? I believe there’s always hope—”
“Ha, and another big fat ha! A thousand years of heresy isn’t putty in your hands. An old chant isn’t going to resurrect what’s dead and gone. What does it matter that Holy Mother church and your church once chanted the same words? What matters is that you rejected the authority of the Pope, an authority given to St. Peter by Christ Himself!”
The old monk pointed outside his window. “See the cliff out there, the one with the cross on top?”
Father Fortis nodded.
“Ever notice those boulders lying at the bottom of the cliff? All good for nothing. Jesus said to Peter, ‘Upon this rock I will build my Church.’ The cross is still planted in the rock. But you Orthodox chose to split off, go your own way. Then it was the Protestants. Now it’s the cults. All useless rubble. You think your chants and fancy monographs can mend damage like that?”
Father Fortis knew he was being baited, but he hadn’t come for that fight. “To quote something I received recently, it sounds like I’m not wanted here, and I’m not needed here.”
Brother Elias’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he snapped his fingers at the cat, which jumped into his lap.
“I bet Sister Anna received a similar message,” Father Fortis said.
The cat purred and closed its eyes in meditation as the monk scratched his neck.
“Well, Boniface, it looks like our special guest is on to us,” Brother Elias replied. “She didn’t belong here, as everyone now knows.”
“I’m guessing you did more than send her a note. You shared your opinion with Abbot Timothy, didn’t you?”
“Of course, more than once.”
“And Brother Andrew? Did you send him notes as well?”
“No. That stupid boy,” Brother Elias said with disdain.
“Why ‘stupid’? Because he had normal feelings for a woman?”
The old monk’s face turned crimson. The cat yawned up at Father Fortis, showing its teeth. “The boy spent a year in our novitiate, and yet the first skirt he sees, he drools like a dog on the prowl. Disgusting.”
Father Fortis thought again how wrong outsiders could be about monks. Guests tended to throw all monks into a narrow category—so holy that they were beyond carnal urges. But monks were as varied as any other group. At one end of the spectrum were dried-up old prunes like Elias, who’d forgotten what the appendage that hung down between their legs was for. At the other end were Brother Andrew and maybe Father Bernard, still dealing painfully with the fact that they were men.
The old monk glared up at him. “For the third time, I’m busy.”
“Then I won’t keep you. Tell me about St. Mary’s enemies.”
“I just said I was busy.” Elias gave him a sly smile. “As they say on the Internet, you’d better narrow your search.”
“Okay. Tell me about the groups who’ve harassed St. Mary’s recently. Say, since Sister Anna came.”
Lifting the cat off his lap, the old monk pecked nimbly on the keyboard. “You’ll see nothing from over there,” he muttered.
Father Fortis brought his chair around to the other side of the table.
“The Southwest is full of fanatics,” Elias began. He moved his hand on the finger pad and brought a screen up for viewing. “This one insists that Pope John Paul, being Polish, was a Communist spy.” He tapped the finger pad again and brought up a second screen. “This one says the church is smuggling Mexicans and Central Americans across the border so she can destroy the English language in America.”
Brother Elias tapped the finger pad again, and the screen changed. “None of those had anything to say about our dead nun, but this one did,” he said, pointing to the screen.
Father Fortis squinted to see a flag waving behind the words “Fight the Beast.” Below the logo was a grainy photograph of St. Mary’s, followed by a photocopy of a February article from the Santa Fe Herald. Father Fortis scanned the article’s description of current building projects at the monastery, especially the architectural plans for the proposed library.
In a caption written below were the words “Celibacy is a demonic and pious charade of Roman Papists to cover immoral practices. A whore is living with the queers at this place.”
Brother Elias was right. This wasn’t funny. “Do the police know about this?” he asked.
“Of course, but since this site is from Missouri, they said it was too far away to matter. They said the group probably found the story on the newspaper’s website.”
“But somebody from out here must have alerted them to it. Groups like these tend to network,” Father Fortis said.
The old monk’s eyebrows jumped, and he looked at Father Fortis with what might have passed for respect. “Harrumph.”
Could whoever had sent the article to the group in Missouri have been responsible, even indirectly, for vandalizing the moradas and killing Sister Anna? Such a wacko group would have motive, but how would they know enough about santos to mark the nun’s body?
“You talked about other groups,” Father Fortis said. “How many are there?”
The old monk leaned forward, his face alight. “Enough for me to put them into categories. Most just love to hate us.” He looked out at the rock face again. “Without us, they’d have nothing to attack.”
Father Fortis pondered the comment. “It reminds me of that story from Brazil, the one about that TV evangelist who took a hammer to the statue of the Blessed Virgin.”
“That’s one type. But there are also renegade Mormon groups, the polygamist types who talk big on their websites. We’re hated by all sorts.”
Father Fortis thought about the wounds left on Sister Anna. It hardly seemed likely that radical Mormons would know about death carts and santos.
“Have any groups trespassed on your property?”
Elias shook his head. “Nothing serious. There was a group of New Agers a few years back. On our property, but not dangerous.”
Father Fortis agreed. Why would New Agers mutilate a nun’s body?
“One more question, Brother Elias,” he asked. “Lieutenant Choi mentioned a group that I can’t say I know much about. What was it he called them?”
“The Penitentes,” Elias replied.
“That’s right. The Penitentes. Could they hate St. Mary’s for some reason, enough to kill Sister Anna?”
Brother Elias made a kissing sound and caught the cat as it jumped into his lap. “The Penitentes are just a bunch of old fools. Like Linus.” Brother Elias nuzzled the head of the cat. “I saw one of their processions once. It was supposed to scare me. Ha! Just an embarrassment. That’s what I think of the so-called Brotherhood. Ask Bernard if you don’t believe me.”
It was hardly the name that Father Fortis expected to hear. “Why Father Bernard?”
“Well, I do overhear things here. I heard him tell Brother Andrew just a few days ago that the Penitentes would be gone in twenty years. I personally think that’s a generous estimate.”
“So Andrew is a Penitente, then.”
Brother Elias nodded knowingly. “Oh, yes. One of the few younger ones, I suspect.”
Puzzled, Father Fortis thought back over the past two days. Father Bernard had mentioned nothing about Brother Andrew being connected with the secretive group. Then again, neither had Father Linus. But what most troubled Father Fortis was this: why had Father Linus suggested Father Bernard was sympathetic to the Brotherhood while Elias had clearly overheard the opposite?