Glenn Cooper - Secret of the Seventh Son

The abbey had taken in children with regularity, though it was not an actively encouraged practice since it strained resources and drew the sisters away from other tasks. Villagers were particularly keen to deposit mentally and physically deformed children at their gates. If Sister Magdalena had her way, they would all have been denied, but Josephus had a soft spot for the most unfortunate of God’s creatures.

Still, this one was disquieting.

“Boy, can you speak?” he asked.

Octavus ignored him and only looked toward the ground at the pattern he had made.

“He cannot speak,” Ubertus said.

Josephus gently reached for his chin and lifted his face. “Are you hungry?”

The boy’s dark eyes wandered.

“Do you know of Christ, your savior?”

Josephus could detect not a flicker of recognition. Octavus’s pale face was tabula rasa, a blank tablet with nothing writ.

“Will you take him, Prior?” the man implored.

Josephus let go of the boy’s chin and the youth fell to the ground and resumed making patterns in the soil with his dirty finger.

Ubertus had tears running down his chiseled face. “Please, I beg of you.”

Sister Magdalena was a stern woman whom no one could recall smiling, even when she played her psaltery and made heavenly music. She was in her fifth decade of life and had lived half of it within the abbey walls. Underneath her veil was a mound of gray braids, and underneath her habit was a tough virgin body as impenetrable as a nutshell. She was not without ambitions, well aware that under the Order of St. Benedict a woman could ascend to the position of abbess should the bishop so wish. As the most senior sister at Vectis this was not out of the question, but Aetia, the Bishop of Dorchester, barely acknowledged her when he visited for Easter and Christmas. She was certain her private musings on how she might better lead the abbey were not vainglory but simply her desire to make the monastery more pure and efficient.

She often approached Oswyn to inform him of her suspicions of waste, excess, or even fornication, and he would patiently listen, sighing under his breath, then later take up the matter with Josephus. Oswyn had been inexorably hobbled by his spinal infirmity, and his pain was a constant thing. Sister Magdalena’s complaints about the flow of ale or the lustful glances she imagined, aimed at her virgin charges, only added to the abbot’s discomfort. He counted on Josephus to deal with these worldly issues so he might concentrate on serving God and honoring Him by completing the rebuilding of the abbey in his lifetime.

Magdalena was known to have no love for children. The filthy particulars of their conception troubled her and she found them altogether needful. She disdained Josephus for allowing them sanctuary at Vectis, particularly the very young and disabled. She had nine children under the age of ten in her care and found that most of them did not sufficiently earn their keep. She had the sisters work them hard, fetching water and firewood, washing plates and utensils, stuffing mattresses with fresh straw to combat the lice. When older they would have time for religious study, but until their minds were tempered by toil she considered them only good for simple hard labor.

Octavus, Josephus’s latest mistake, infuriated her.

He was incapable of following the most basic commands. He refused to empty a pot or throw a log onto the fire in the kitchen. He would not go to bed without being dragged to it or arise with the other children without being pulled from the pallet. The other children sniggered at him and called him names. At first Magdalena believed him to be willful and beat him with sticks, but in time she tired of the corporal punishment since it had no effect whatsoever, not even eliciting a satisfying cry or a whimper. And when she was done, the boy would invariably retrieve her stick from the wood pile and use it to scratch his patterns onto the dirt floor of the kitchen.

Now, with the autumn about to turn to winter, she ignored the boy completely, leaving him to his own devices. Fortunately, he ate like a small bird and made little demand on their stores.

On a cold December morning, Josephus was leaving the Scriptorium on his way to mass. The first wintry storm of the season had blown over the island during the night and left behind a coating of snow sparkling so brightly in the sunshine it stung his eyes. He rubbed his hands together for warmth and tread rapidly up the path as his toes were getting numb.

Octavus was squatting beside the path, barefoot in his thin clothes. Josephus frequently saw him in the abbey grounds. He usually paused to touch the boy’s shoulder, say a fleeting prayer that whatever malady he possessed might be healed, then quickly went on with his business. But today he was afraid the boy might freeze if left unattended. He looked around for one of the sisters but there was no one in sight.

“Octavus!” Josephus exclaimed. “Come inside! You must not be about in the snow without shoes!”

The boy had a stick in his hand and, as usual, was drawing patterns, but this time there was a hint of excitement on that blank delicate face. The snowfall had created a vast clean surface for him to scratch upon.

Josephus stood over him and was about to lift Octavus up when he stopped short and gasped.

Surely this could not be so!

Josephus shielded his eyes from the intense glare and confirmed his initial fear.

He bounded back to the Scriptorium and moments later returned with Paulinus, whom he dragged furiously by the sleeve, despite the protestations of the thin minister.

“What is it, Josephus?” Paulinus cried. “Why will you not say what is the matter?”

“Look!” Josephus answered. “Tell me what you see.”

Octavus continued to work his stick in the snow. The two men towered over him and studied his etchings.

“It cannot be!” Paulinus hissed.

“But surely it is,” Josephus countered.

There were letters in the snow, unmistakable letters.

S-I-G-B-E-R-T O-F T-I-S

“Sigbert of Tis?”

“He is not done,” Josephus said excitedly. “Look: Sigbert of Tisbury.”

“How can this boy write?” Paulinus asked. The monk was as white as the snow and too scared to shiver.

“I do not know,” Josephus said. “No one in his village can read or write. The sisters have certainly not been teaching him. In truth, he is considered feeble-minded.”

The boy kept working his stick.

18 12 782 Natus

Paulinus crossed himself. “My God! He writes numbers too! The eighteenth day of the twelfth month, 782. That is today!”

“Natus,” Joseph whispered. “Birth.”

Paulinus stamped his feet through the snow writings, eradicating the numbers and letters. “Bring him!”

They waited for the monks to leave the Scriptorium for mass before seating the boy atop one of the copying tables. Paulinus put a sheet of vellum in front of him and handed him a quill.

Octavus immediately began to move the quill over the parchment and did not seem at all bothered that there was nothing to see.

“No!” Paulinus exclaimed. “Wait! Watch me.” He dipped the quill into a ceramic pot of ink and gave it back to him. The boy continued to scratch but this time his efforts were visible. He seemed to take notice of the tight black letters he was forming, and a guttural noise emanated from deep in his throat. It was the first sound he had ever made.

Cedric of York 18 12 782 Mors

“Again, the date. Today,” Paulinus muttered. “But this time he writes ‘Mors.’ Death.”

“This is surely sorcery,” Josephus lamented, stepping backward until his rump bumped against another copying table.

The ink ran dry and Paulinus took the boy’s hand and made him dip the quill himself. Expressionless, Octavus started writing again but this time it began as gibberish.