Glenn Cooper: Library of the Dead aka Secret of the Seventh Son

This was rubbish, Luke had thought, a rite of initiation for young men with fanciful imaginations. He would concentrate on his duties and his education and not allow himself to be drawn into such nonsense.

Yet there was no denying that a complex of buildings was out of bounds to him and his fellows. In a far corner of the abbey beyond the monk’s cemetery there was a simple unadorned timber building the size of a small chapel, which was connected to a long low building some referred to as the outer kitchen. Out of curiosity, Luke had periodically wandered close enough to sneak peeks of comings and goings. He had witnessed grain, vegetable, meat, and milk deliveries. He had seen the same group of brothers regularly entering and leaving, and on more than one occasion, young women escorted into the chapel-sized building.

He was young and inexperienced and satisfied that there were things in this world he was not expected or entitled to understand. He would not allow himself to be distracted from his intimacy with God, which was growing stronger every day he spent within the walls of the monastery.

Luke’s perfectly balanced and harmonious existence came to an end on a late October day. The morning had begun unseasonably warm and sunny but turned cool and rainy as the edge of a storm brushed the isle. He was taking a meditative walk on the abbey grounds, and as the wind whipped up and the rain started pelting down, he hugged the perimeter wall to shield himself. His path took him to the far side of the sisters’ dormitory, where he could see young women hurrying outside to collect the wash.

A particularly strong gust plucked a child’s shirt from a hemp line and launched it into the air, where the wind played with it awhile before depositing the cloth on the grass a short distance from Luke. As he sprinted for it he saw a girl break from her colleagues and run across the field to retrieve it too. Her veil pulled away as she ran, revealing long flowing hair the color of bee’s honey.

She is not a sister, Luke thought, for her hair would be shorn. She was lithe with the grace of a young deer and just as skittish when she realized she was about to make contact with him. Stopping short, she let Luke reach the shirt as she held back. He snatched it up and waved it in the rain, his smile as huge as ever. “I have it for you!” he called out.

He had never seen a face as beautiful as hers, a perfect chin, high cheeks, green-blue eyes, moist lips, and skin the luminescence of a pearl he once saw on the hand of a fine lady in London.

Elizabeth was no more than sixteen, a vision of youth and purity. She was from Newport, sold by her father into indentured servitude at age nine to serve in the household of Countess Isabella at Carisbrooke. Isabella, in turn, bequeathed her two years later to Vectis as a gift to the abbey. Sister Sabeline had personally chosen Elizabeth from a group of girls on the offer. She’d held the girl’s chin between her thumb and forefinger and declared that this one would be suitable for the monastery.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth told Luke as he approached her, her voice sounding to him like a small bell, light and high.

“I am sorry it has become soaked.” He gave the shirt to her. Even though their hands did not touch, he felt an energy pass between them. He made sure no one was looking before asking, “What is your name?”

“Elizabeth.”

“I am Brother Luke.”

“I know. I have seen you.”

“You have?”

She looked down. “I must get back,” she said, and she ran off.

He watched her glide away from him, and from that moment on she began competing in Luke’s thoughts with Jesus Christ, his Lord and Savior.

He made a practice of passing behind the sisters’ dormitory during his constitutionals, and somehow she always seemed to appear, if only to slap a garment on the washing stone or empty a bucket. When he caught sight of her, his smile would broaden and she would nod back and let the corners of her mouth curl toward her ears. They would never speak, but this did not diminish the pleasure of these encounters, and as soon as one would end he started to think about the next.

Surely, this behavior was wrong, he thought, and surely his musings were impure. But he had never felt this way about another person and was utterly powerless to block her from his mind. He repented and repented repeatedly, but kept ruminating on an insane urge to touch her silky skin with his palms, a preoccupation that was strongest when he lay alone in his bed, struggling to quiet the ache in his loins.

Luke began to hate himself, and his self-loathing wiped the perpetual smile from his face. His soul was tortured and he became another somber-faced monk moving slowly through the monastery.

He knew exactly what he deserved-to be punished, if not in this world then in the next.

As Abbot Baldwin was completing his prayers at the shrine of Josephus, Luke was strolling past the sisters’ dormitory, wishing to catch a glimpse of Elizabeth. It was a cold crystalline morning and the discomfort of the blistering wind against his exposed skin stoked his masochism. The yard behind the dormitory was empty, and he could only hope his movements were being followed from one of the small windows that lined the steep-roofed building.

He was not disappointed. As he came closer, a door opened and she emerged wrapped in a long brown cloak. He had been holding his breath; when he saw her, he let out a puff of air that condensed and formed an ephemeral cloud. He thought she looked so lovely, he would slow down to prolong the moment, perhaps allowing himself to drift a bit nearer than usual, near enough to see the flutter of her eyelashes.

Then something quite extraordinary happened.

She walked straight toward him, stopping him dead in his tracks. She kept coming until she was only an arm’s length away. He wondered whether this was a dream, but when he saw that she was crying and felt the warm air of her sobs pulsing against his neck, he knew it was real. He was too shocked to check for spies. “Elizabeth! What is the matter?”

“Sister Sabeline told me I am to be next,” she said, choking and sputtering.

“Next? Next for what?”

“For the crypts. I am to be taken to the crypts! Please help me, Luke!”

He wanted to reach out to comfort her but knew that would be unpardonable. “I do not know what you speak of. What is to happen in the crypts?”

“You do not know?” she asked.

“No! Tell me!”

“Not here. Not now!” she sobbed. “Can we meet tonight? After you have done Vespers?”

“Where?”

“I don’t know!” she cried. “Not here! Quickly! Sister Sabeline will find me!”

He thought quick, panicky thoughts. “All right. The stables. After Vespers. Meet me there if you are able.”

“I will. I must flee. God bless you, Luke.”

Baldwin paced nervously around his prior, Felix, who was seated on a chair with a horsehair cushion. Ordinarily this would have been a comfortable setting-the abbot’s private receiving room, a nice radiating fire, a chalice of wine on a soft chair-but Felix was certainly not comfortable. Baldwin was flitting about like a fly in a hot room, and his anxiety was contagious. He was a man of wholly ordinary looks and proportions, without any physical manifestations of his holy position such as outward serenity or a wise countenance. Had he not worn the ermine-festooned robe and ornate crucifix of abbot, he would be mistaken for any village tradesman or merchant.

“I have prayed for answers, yet I have none,” Baldwin pouted. “Can you not shed light on this dark matter?”

“I cannot, Father,” Felix said in his thick-tongued Breton accent.

“Then we must have a meeting of the council.”