The Dalwich Desecration (26 page)

“And the Gospel of Peter . . . ?” Colin asked.

“That is not a recognized biblical text.”

“Meaning you discount its more fantastical accounting of the Resurrection?” Colin pressed.

“Out of hand,” he answered at once.

“And the discovery of the
Codex Syriacus
in the same monastery several years ago . . . ? Have you seen the photographs the sisters took of it?”

“I have not,” Father Demetris answered, looking neither pleased nor impressed.

“They are saying these are the original versions of the first four books of the New Testament,” Colin pressed with almost an embarrassment of enthusiasm. “And there is no mention of Jesus visiting his disciples after the Resurrection. It seems now that all first-person accounts were added to the manuscripts more than a century later, including the last twelve verses of Mark, which are entirely missing from the original.”

Father Demetris's face pinched as his eyes settled on the two of us. “These writings . . . these documents . . . whatever they are and however they fit into the whole of God's design, I cannot say. But in the end, they are the reason the church must point to the canon of faith to defend itself against such attacks. It is the surety that resides only in a man's heart and soul that matters. That is the tenet that guides each one of us.”

“Your conviction is powerful”—Colin nodded as he handed the stub of pencil back over to me—“but as I am a man mired in the conundrum that cost your abbot his life, I would still very much like to see what he wrote in his journals while in Egypt. Brother Bursnell has promised to do a thorough search of the library for us, but he has yet to produce so much as a single sheet of paper.”

“I shall speak with him,” Father Demetris assured, though with far less veracity than he had displayed a moment ago.

Colin stood up. “Then I think we can ask no more of you for now.” He went to the door and grabbed the knob, but before opening it he glanced back, and asked, “Did you ever have occasion to speak to the abbot about his sojourn to Egypt?”

“Not directly. But John Tufton remained a querying man throughout his life. It is what made him such a fine and devout leader for the brotherhood here at Whitmore Abbey.”

A contented smile settled upon Colin's face as he nodded ever so slightly. “You have done his memory a great service,” he said. And while I could not discern what had pleased him so suddenly, I was happy to note it as I followed him back out into the utter silence of the monastery's central hallway.

CHAPTER 25

D
inner that night, such as it was, was dispatched with its usual banality. It consisted of roast chicken cut up into small, unrecognizable pieces so that each monk received a like, if diminutive, portion, boiled greens with just a touch of pork tossed in for flavor, and cubed potatoes that had been pan-fried with rosemary. The whole of it tasted adequate.

Conversation during the meal had been typically sparse. Father Demetris, Colin, and I had briefly remained in the refectory afterward to share some benign conversation with the senior monks, Brothers Morrison, Silsbury, Clayworth, and the oft-ailing Brother Wright. But our chatter had been idle and I knew Colin was only waiting for the moment when the monks would announce it was time to retire for the evening.

Brother Bursnell had been invited to join our brief exchange but had begged off, insisting he was going to return to the library to have one last go at finding the abbot's missing Egyptian journals. I noticed Colin studying the young monk as he scurried out of the refectory and could easily sense Colin's growing distrust of the man. And sure enough, a short time later when we were all filing back to our cells for the night, we passed the library only to find it dark and silent. If Brother Bursnell really had come back to initiate a final search, it had not lasted the length of a quarter hour.

For whatever reason I did not feel as oppressed when delivered to the abbot's cell. I suppose it seemed less intimidating since it was my second night doing so. I was already warming up to the notion of getting a decent sleep tonight when Colin quickly leaned over and whispered that he would be by later.

“Whatever for?” I mumbled back under my breath.

“We have work to do,” he answered with a measure of disbelief as though I was balmy to have asked such a question.

“What?” Brother Morrison turned around and barked. He was closest to us given the way he had to hobble as a result of the lameness on his left side.

“Just telling Mr. Pruitt to have a blessed evening.” Colin flashed a complacent smile, which made me want to cringe.

“Then perhaps we are having a beneficial effect on you after all,” Brother Clayworth chuckled softly.

I forced myself to look amused but was relieved to be able to make a hasty exit by ducking into the tiny cell. As I leaned against the door a minute, the sound of clicking boots retreating down the hallway assured me that the lot of them had departed. I simply could not allow myself to feel comfortable around these monks. I dared not trust them—for one of them had almost certainly murdered their abbot—and I knew I would be wholly reviled were these monks ever to learn how Colin and I lived.

Heaving a sigh to banish such thoughts, I took the small candle I'd been given and lit both the slender taper on the stand next to the pitcher of fresh water and the far stouter one on the table, which is where I planted myself. For a short while after I settled in I heard the same soft sounds of disharmonious chanting drift from the cells near me and found it somehow comforting as I sat there wondering how I might fill my time. With no better idea coming to mind, I finally fetched up a few more sheets of paper and a fresh pencil, and began rubbing at the tabletop again, concentrating on the places where I had found the incomplete markings the night before.

As I dragged the side of the lead in great sweeping arcs, I found myself feeling strangely intrusive, much as I had the previous night, as though I were trying to peer into the abbot's private thoughts by attempting to get the tabletop to reveal his secrets. But just as before, I found myself having little real luck. I dredged up the bit of Psalm I recognized—
“lamp to my feet and a light to my path”
—and even though it was undeniably familiar to me, I could not supply the rest of the verse. Why I had not picked up one of the multitude of Bibles around the monastery I could not fathom. As there are some hundred and fifty Psalms, I must admit that it seemed like an exercise in futility. And even if I did manage to locate it, there was little reason to believe that it would impart so much as a hint of value with respect to the abbot's murder.

I turned myself back to the rubbing and quickly found the last name,
Strauss,
again. It was obviously the match for the bit of folded paper Colin had found in the abbot's Bible. I would have to check with him when he returned to see if he still had that scrap of paper on him. If nothing else it would prove to be notable if they were the same, though I was still perplexed at the abbot's evident interest in Richard Strauss's music. I had always found it engaging, but it was certainly not canonical.

This time I was also able to tease out the name
Mona,
which I had not discovered on my first attempt, but as there was nothing written on either side of it I was left to ponder who this woman might be; a sister or cousin seemed most likely. The word
sin
came into view, just as it had the night before, hardly a cause for interest or curiosity. I would have been rather surprised
not
to find it written somewhere on here. But nothing else I could coax from the table made a whit of sense whatsoever. They were clearly partial bits:
icus, ne, ith, w, bar,
and
mew
. While the last two were, in fact, actual words, they both seemed unexpected, if not inappropriate, to be written by the abbot of a monastery.

Sometime shortly after unearthing these same fragments for the second time, my eyelids betrayed me and I sank to the tabletop without realizing I had done so. It was only after the faintest click of a door settling into place abruptly sheared through my brain that I bolted up and found myself staring at a hulking shadow hovering just inside the cell. The tapered candle on the washstand had sputtered out at some point, leaving me to blink repeatedly in an effort to try and get my eyes to adjust to the faint darkness. It was just as my heart began to ratchet up that Colin took a small step forward into the thin light of the table's candle.

“Were you asleep?”

“No,” I heard myself lie inexplicably without a second thought. “I was just tired of waiting for you.” At least that part was true.

“I hope I didn't frighten you.”

“I wasn't frightened,” I lied again.

He chuckled as he sat down on the cot. “Ever the brave one.” He reached over and grabbed the sheets of paper I'd been working on. “I had to give these good, pious gentlemen time to fall asleep,” he bothered to explain as he studied the pages, one after another. “Did you find anything new?”

“A woman's name.” I stifled a yawn. “Mona. Do you remember anyone mentioning the abbot having a sister named Mona?” He gave me a disbelieving smirk and I knew the question was absurd. I doubted he even remembered the abbot's name. “None of it makes any sense nor seems to have the slightest relevance to the murder,” I groused as I rubbed my eyes.

“Really?” he asked simply, and the underlying tone in his voice assured me that I had missed something. “Do you not recognize the partial bit of that Psalm?”

“I know I've heard it before, but I certainly couldn't tell you what the rest of it was,” I answered, trying not to let my disappointment show as I began to realize that he could recall the whole of it.

“
Thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path,
” he recited smoothly. “
I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to observe thy righteous ordinances
.”

“And just how the hell do you remember that?!” I blasted back perhaps a little too harshly.

He chuckled quietly. “I didn't. I had to look it up in the abbot's Bible.” But even this admission forced me to grit my teeth as it meant Colin had taken the time and effort to find this single quote while I had dismissed the effort out of hand. “The dear man had underlined it,” he confessed with a lopsided grin.

I shook my head, though his declaration did allow me to feel marginally better. “I still don't see what it has to do with anything,” I repeated. “And why was the abbot so obsessed with Richard Strauss?” I pointed to the rubbing of the composer's name. “Does this match that little sliver of paper you found in Abbot Tufton's Bible?”

Colin's grin widened as his dimples bloomed on his face. This had to be good, I realized. Very good. “I have to admit that I was wondering the same thing,” he said as he dug a hand into his vest pocket and pulled out the neatly folded scrap of paper. As he opened it and handed it to me, I could see at once that it was
not
the same instance of Strauss's name that I had been able to reveal from the tabletop.

“I don't get it,” I grumbled. “What the bloody hell was his interest in Richard Strauss?!”

Colin stared at me, the flickering of the candle on the table amplifying the merriment just behind his gaze. “Your error is in your presumption.”

“What?”

“It isn't
Richard
Strauss that he was so balmy over. It was
David Friedrich
Strauss.”

And before the name had fully left Colin's mouth, it all made sense. “The theologian . . .” I muttered.

“And writer,” he corrected. “Scandalized the whole of Europe with the publication of his book,
The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined
. He was the
first
to point out that the books of the Bible had been hand copied for greater than a thousand years, and seldom by professional scribes. The poor bastard was roundly chastised for making the case that the books of the Bible are
filled
with inconsistencies.”

“But why would Abbot Tufton have anything to do with David Strauss's assertions? The man was vilified.”

“Why indeed?” Colin leveled his gaze on me, the single candle's light casting shadows across his eyes, making them look almost black. “What unusual thing do we already know about the abbot?”

“That he had a crisis of faith a few years ago and traveled to Egypt to assuage it,” I answered back resolutely, the warmth of Colin's smile confirming that I had struck at the very heart of what he was alluding to.

“And what else did you manage to tease up with your rubbings of his table?”

“A bit of Scripture and some useless, random words—”

“Look at what you just did,” he cut me off. “Look at the placement of those fragments and tell me you don't notice any sort of pattern,” he urged as he held the sheets of paper up for me.

“Pattern?” I stared at the mess of it all and tried to make sense of it.

 

 

 

 

“Well, I certainly recognize David Strauss's last name now, and there is no mistaking the word
sin
. . .”

“Allow me.” Colin tossed me a patient look as he dropped the pages back onto his lap and snatched the pencil from the tabletop. “You will curse yourself when you see the first three,” he warned as he began to rewrite the fragments of words onto a fresh sheet of paper.

And only after he had done so, in the exact order and configuration that I had found them, did he begin to fill in the blanks. Even from where I was sitting I immediately began to see actual, sensible words beginning to take shape from out of the splinters I had culled. And he was right. By the time he finished the first line, I was aggravated for not having spotted it myself. The only saving grace was that I had no awareness of the bottom line. If it was meant to make sense to me, it still did not.

“Now, then . . .” He held the paper up and looked at it a moment before passing it back to me, sliding my pencil back onto the table by my elbow with great satisfaction. “Does that help at all?” He grinned roguishly.

I stared at the paper and wondered how he had seen these things when I had found only gibberish. Even the sound of his whispered snicker could not assail against my astonishment.

 

SIN
AIT
ICUS
AG
NE
S SM
ITH

 

 

 

“What is the White Monastery?” I asked after a minute. “And who the devil is Bartholomew?”

“The White Monastery is also in Egypt and is where the ancient testament of Bartholomew was found just a handful of years ago. It includes a story of Jesus, post-Resurrection, going to Hell and rescuing all of those who had fallen from God's grace. While it, like the Gospel of Peter I mentioned to Father Demetris earlier, is not a recognized biblical text, it is still quite incendiary nonetheless.” Colin's face sobered. “For a man who supposedly fought his demons in Egypt nearly four years ago, it would appear Abbot Tufton was still very much conflicted.”

“And the Psalm . . .” I muttered, finally recognizing the connection there, “. . . it's referring to God's words, the Bible, and the need to commit to following them. Words we now know were manipulated innumerable times since their original writing.”

Colin nodded grimly. “Well done. I would say that all of this conspires to inform us that the poor abbot was well adrift, and it seems to me that someone here must have found that fact untenable.”

“But
murder?!
” I heard the skepticism in my voice and winced at my own naïveté. Did I not know firsthand of killings that had been committed for lesser reasons? And those that appeared to have been carried out for no reason at all?