Glenn Cooper - Secret of the Seventh Son

Jose stood over Octavus’s shoulder and studied the page. “His last entry is the seventh day of Junius, 800!”

“Dear Jesus!” Josephus exclaimed. “The two of them are connected as one!”

The four ministers tried to read each other in the dancing candlelight.

“I know what you are thinking,” Magdalena said, “and I cannot abide by it.”

“How can you know, Prioress, when I myself do not,” Josephus answered.

“Search your soul, Josephus,” she said skeptically. “I am certain you know your own mind.”

Paulinus threw up his hands. “You are both talking in riddles. Can an old man not expect to know of what you are speaking?”

Josephus rose slowly to avoid wooziness. “Come, let us leave the boy with Octavus for a short while. No harm will come of him. I would have my three friends join me upstairs where we might have a prayerful discussion.”

It was warmer and more comfortable than in the damp cellar. Josephus had them sit at copy desks, Josephus facing Magdalena, Paulinus facing Jose.

He recounted the night of Octavus’s birth and each remarkable milestone in the youth’s history. To be sure, they all knew these details, but Josephus had never before laid out an oral history and they were sure he had a purpose for doing so now. He then turned to the briefer though no less remarkable history of Primus, including the events that had just transpired.

“Can any of us doubt,” Josephus asked, “that we have a sacred obligation to preserve and sustain this divine work? For reasons which we may never know, God has entrusted us, His servants at Vectis Abbey, to be the keepers of these miraculous texts. He has endowed this youth, Octavus, born in miraculous circumstances, with the power-nay, the imperative-to chronicle the entry and passage of all the souls entering and departing from this Earth. Man’s destiny is thus laid bare. The texts are a testament to the power and omniscience of the Creator, and we are humbled by the love and care He has for His children.” A tear formed and started to slide down his face. “Octavus is but one special though surely mortal being. I have wondered, and so have you, how the enormity of his task might be perpetuated. We now have our answer.”

He paused and noted their solemn nods.

“I am dying.”

“No!” Jose protested, showing the concern a son might have for a father.

“Yes, it is true. I am quite sure that none of you are too shocked. You have only to look at me to know that I am gravely ill.”

Paulinus reached out to touch his wrist and Magdalena wrung her hands.

“And Paulinus, will you not acknowledge that you have seen the name Josephus of Vectis entered in one of the books?”

Paulinus answered through parched lips, “I have.”

“And you know my date certain?”

“I do.”

“It is soon?”

“It is.”

“It is not tomorrow, I trust,” he jested.

“It is not.”

“Excellent,” he said, lightly tapping his fingertips together. “It is my duty to prepare for the future, not only for the abbey, but for Octavus and the Library. So here, tonight, I declare that I will send for the bishop and beseech him, upon my passing, to elevate Sister Magdalena to Abbess of Vectis and Brother Jose to prior. Brother Paulinus, dear friend, you will continue to serve them as you have done so faithfully for me.”

Magdalena bowed her head deeply to hide the thin smile she could scarcely suppress. Paulinus and Jose were mute with grief.

“And I have one further declaration,” Josephus continued. “Tonight we are forming a new order within Vectis, a secret and holy order for the protection and preservation of the Library. We four are the founding members, which will henceforth be known as the Order of the Names. Let us pray.”

He led them in deep prayer, and when he was done they rose as one.

Josephus touched Magdalena on her bony shoulder. “When Vespers is complete, we will do what must be done. Will you do this willingly?”

The old woman hesitated and silently prayed to the Holy Mother. Josephus was waiting for her response. “I will,” she said.

After Vespers, Josephus retired to his room to meditate. He knew what was transpiring but did not wish to witness the events personally. His resolve was strong but he remained at the core a kind, gentle soul with no stomach for this kind of business.

He knew that as he bowed his head in prayer, Magdalena and Jose were leading Mary from the Hospicium down the dark path to the Scriptorium. He knew she would be softly weeping. He knew the weeping would turn to loud sobbing when they pulled her by the hand down the stairs into the cellar. And he knew the sobs would turn to screams when Paulinus opened the door to Octavus’s chamber and Jose bodily forced her through the threshold then latched the door behind her.

R eggie Saunders was having a roll in the hay, as he called it, with Laurel Barnes, the buxom wife of Wing Commander Julian Barnes, in the middle of the wing commander’s four-poster bed. He was enjoying himself a great deal. It was a grand country house with a grand master bedroom, a nice little fire to take the chill off, and an appreciative Mrs. Barnes, who had grown accustomed to faring for herself during her husband’s war hiatus.

Reggie was a florid, burly fellow with a manly beer belly. A childish smile and impossibly large shoulders were the one-two punch that matted all sorts of women, the present one included. Concealed by his impishness and gabby affability was a moral compass that was broken. The arrow pointed in one direction only, toward Reggie Saunders. He always felt the world owed him for his existence, and his successful navigation of the World War with eyes, limbs, and genitals intact was a sign to him that a grateful nation should continue to provide for his needs be they financial or sensual. Laws of the Crown and societal mores were approximate guide posts in his world, things to consider perhaps, then ignore.

His army war service started nasty and inconvenient as a staff sergeant in Montgomery’s Eighth Army trying to dislodge Rommel from Tobruk. After too long in the desert, he wheedled a transfer in 1944 from North Africa to liberated France to a regiment tasked with recovering and cataloguing Nazi art loot.

His boss was the nicest gentleman he had ever met, a Cambridge don whose idea of commanding men was to ask them politely whether they might be able to help him with this or that. Incredibly, the army had gotten it right with Major Geoffrey Atwood, finding a job for the Professor of Archaeology and Antiquities that actually suited his skills rather than dangerously and ineffectively sticking him somewhere with a map, field glasses, and large guns.

Saunders’s job mainly consisted of ordering a squad of lads to shift heavy wooden crates out of basements and transport them to other basements. He never shared a sense of moral outrage at the Germans’ takings. He found their thievery quite understandable under the circumstances. In fact, under his watch a knickknack or two made it through his hands in exchange for a few quid, and why not? Postwar, he wandered from job to job, doing a bit of construction here and there, absconding when necessary from romantic entanglements. When Atwood rang to see if he’d be interested in a little adventure on the Isle of Wight, he was in between engagements and replied, “Blow in my ear, boss, and I’ll follow you anywhere.”

Now, Reggie was pounding away, pleasantly lost in a sea of pink flesh that smelled of talc and lavender. The lady of the house was making little cooing sounds that sent him drifting to the aviary at Kew Gardens where he was brought as a young boy for a bit of natural culture. He soon reeled his mind back to the moment. The vinegar stroke was coming, and a job worth doing was a job worth doing well, his granddad had always said. Then he heard something mechanical, a throaty rumble.