Glenn Cooper - Book of Souls

Her cries grew louder and in a second room he saw Sister Sabeline holding a candle. He crept closer. The candle illuminated the colorless skin of one of the ginger-haired men. He was naked, and Luke could see the caved-in cheeks of his emaciated buttocks, his spindly arms hanging limp by his side. Sabeline was goading him, calling in frustration, “I have brought this girl for you!” When nothing happened, the nun demanded, “Touch her!”

Then he spotted Elizabeth, cowering on the floor, covering her eyes, bracing herself for the touch of a living skeleton.

Luke acted automatically, without the fear of consequences. He leapt forward and grabbed the man by the bony shoulders and threw him to the ground. It was easy to do, like tossing a child. He heard Sister Sabeline shrieking, “What are you doing here? What are you doing?” He ignored her and reached out for Elizabeth, who seemed to recognize she was being touched not by evil but by the hand of deliverance. She opened her eyes and stared gratefully at his face. The pale man was on the ground, trying to pick himself up from the spot where Luke had roughly shoved him. “Brother Luke, leave us!” Sabeline screamed. “You have violated a sacred place!”

Luke screamed back. “I will not leave without this girl. How can this be sacred? All I see is evil.”

He took Elizabeth by the hand and pulled her up.

Sabeline shrieked at him. “You do not understand!”

From the chamber, Luke began to hear sounds of chaos and turmoil-crashing, thuds, thrashing, and wet, flopping noises like large fish being hauled onto a ship’s deck, writhing and suffocating.

The naked ginger-haired man turned away and walked toward the noise.

“What is happening?” Luke asked.

Sabeline took her candle and rushed toward the hall, leaving them alone in the dark.

“Are you safe?” Luke asked her.

“You came for me,” she whispered.

He helped her find her way from the darkness into the light and into the hall.

The memory of what he saw must have been seared onto the back of his eyes because every time he shut them, every day of his long life, he could still see Sister Sabeline, walking numbly through that terrible place muttering, “My God, My God, My God,” over and over, as if she were chanting.

He did not want Elizabeth to suffer what he saw and begged her to close her eyes and let him guide her. As they threaded their way toward the door, he suddenly had an uncontrollable urge to snatch up one of the parchments that lay on the wooden desks, and he chose one that was not soaked in blood.

They ran up the steep, spiral stairs, through the chapel, and out into the mist and rain. He made her keep running until they were far from the abbey gate. The cathedral bells were pealing in alarm. They had to make their way to the shore. He had to get her off the island.

“Tell me why you came back to Vectis?” Felix asked.

“I have been troubled the whole of my life by what I saw that day, and I did not want to go to my grave without seeking understanding. I have long thought of coming back. I was finally able.”

“It is a shame you left the Church. I remember your great piety and generosity of spirit.”

“All gone,” Luke said bitterly. “Taken.”

“I am saddened, my son. You surely have the opinion that Vectis Abbey was a place of sin and evil, but it is not so. Our great enterprise had a holy and sacred purpose.”

“And what was that purpose, Father?”

“We were serving the needs of God by serving the needs of these frail, mute scribes. Through divine intervention, their labors spanned centuries. They were making a record, Luke, a record of the arrivals and passings of all God’s children, then and into the future.”

“How was this possible?”

Felix shrugged. “From the hand of God to the hands of these men. They had a strange, singular purpose. Otherwise, they were like children, completely dependent on us for their care.”

Luke spat out, “Not only that.”

“Yes, they had a need to reproduce. Their task was enormous. It required thousands of them laboring for hundreds of years. We had to give them the means.”

“I am sorry, Father, but that is an abomination. You forced your sisters into whoredom.”

“Not whoredom!” Felix cried. His emotion raised the pressure inside his head and made his eye throb ferociously. “It was service! Service toward a higher purpose! It was beyond outsiders to understand!” He clutched the side of his head in pain.

Luke worried that the old man would die in front of him, so he eased off. “What became of their labors?”

“There was a vast Library, Luke, surely the largest in all of Christendom. You were close to it that day but never saw it. After you fled, Abbot Baldwin, blessed be his memory, had the Library sealed and the chapel razed by fire. It is my belief the Library was consumed.”

“Why was that done, Father?”

“Baldwin believed that man was not ready for the revelations of the Library. And I daresay he feared you, Luke.”

“Me?”

“He feared you would reveal the secrets, that others would come, that outsiders would hold us in judgment, that evil men would exploit the Library for dark purposes. He made a decision, and I carried it out. I lit the fires myself.”

Luke saw his parchment on the abbot’s table, rolled back in its ribbon. “The parchment I took that day, pray tell me its meaning, Father. It has vexed me.”

“Luke, my son, I will tell you all I know. I will be dead soon. I feel a great burden upon me, as I am the last man alive who knows about the Library. I have written an account of my knowledge. Please allow me to unburden myself by giving you that account and also pressing something else upon you.”

He went to his chest and retrieved the massive book. Luke rushed over to take it from him, as it appeared too heavy for him to manage.

“It is the only surviving one,” Felix said. “You and I have another connection, Luke. You knew not why you took that parchment that day, and I know not why I saved one book from the fire. Perhaps, we were both guided by an unseen hand. Will you take back your parchment and also take this book, which has within it a letter I have written? Will you allow this old man to pass the burden to you?”

“When I was young, you were kind to me and took me in, Father. I will.”

“Thank you.”

“What am I to do with them?”

Felix lifted his eyes toward the ceiling of his fine room. “That is for God to decide.”

1334

London

Baron Cantwell of Wroxall woke up scratching and thinking about boots. He inspected his arms and abdomen and found small raised bumps, the telltale signs he had shared his mattress with bedbugs. Really! It was a privilege, to be sure, to be at Court, a guest at the Palace at Westminster, but surely the king would not wish his nobles to be eaten alive while they slept. He would have a stern word with the steward.

His room was small but otherwise comfortable. A bed, a chair, a chest, a commode, candles, and a rug to take the chill off the floor. It was lacking a hearth, so he would not have wanted to spend a midwinter night there, but in the pleasant blush of spring, it was satisfactory. In his youth, before he had curried royal favor, when Charles would visit London, he would stay at inns, where even at the more salubrious ones, he would have to share a bed with a stranger. Still, in those days, he would rarely retire in a state more conscious than blind drunk, so it hardly mattered. He was older now, with higher rank, and he assiduously favored his creature comforts.

He relieved himself in the chamber pot and inspected his member for sores, a precaution he always took after a night of whoring. Relieved, he had a long look out of one of the leaded windows. Through the greenish panes, he could see to the north the magnificent sweep of the River Thames. A high-sided cogge was passing by, setting its sails and making way for the estuary, heavy with goods. Beneath the royal apartments, at water’s edge, a marsh harrier swooped for mice, and upstream, a rag and bones man was tipping a rubbish cart into the river, impudently close to Westminster Hall, where the Royal Council would meet in a day. Momentarily distracted by the sights of the great city, his thoughts drifted back to his feet, which looked particularly coarse and raw. Today he would get his new boots.