Louise Penny - The Beautiful Mystery

“That’s better.” Beauvoir paused before whispering, “Do you know what you’re talking about?”

“I know a little, but not much,” admitted the Chief. “I know enough about choirs to know they don’t direct themselves, any more than a symphony orchestra can conduct itself, no matter how often they perform a work. They still need their leader.”

“Isn’t the abbot their leader?” asked Beauvoir, watching Dom Philippe.

The Chief also watched the tall, slender man. Who really led these monks? both men wondered, as they bowed and sat again. Who was leading them now?

The Angelus bell rang out, its deep, rich notes pealing over the trees and across the lake.

Vespers was over. The monks bowed to the crucifix and filed back off the altar while Gamache and the others stood in their pew and watched.

“Should I get the key from that young monk?” Beauvoir waved to Frère Luc, who was leaving the altar.

“In a moment, Jean-Guy.”

“But the boatman?”

“If he hasn’t left by now, he’ll still be waiting.”

“How d’you know?”

“Because he’ll be curious,” said Gamache, studying the monks. “Wouldn’t you wait?”

They watched the monks leave the altar and pool on either side of the church. Yes, thought Beauvoir, shooting a glance at the Chief, I’d wait .

With their hoods down and heads up Gamache could see their faces. Some looked as though they’d been crying, some looked wary, some weary and anxious. Some just looked interested. As though they were watching a play.

It was difficult for Gamache to trust what he was sensing from these men. So many strong emotions masqueraded as something else. Anxiety could look like guilt. Relief could look like amusement. Grief, deep-felt and inconsolable, often looked like nothing at all. The deepest passions could appear dispassionate, the face a smooth plain while something mammoth roiled away underneath.

The Chief scanned the faces, and came back to two.

The young gatekeeper, who’d met them at the dock. Frère Luc. Gamache could see the large key dangling from the rope about his waist.

Luc looked the most blank. And yet, when they’d first met him, he’d clearly been very upset.

Then Gamache turned his gaze on the abbot’s glum secretary. Brother Simon.

Sadness. Waves of it washed off the man.

Not guilt, not sorrow, not wrath or mourning. Not irae or illa .

But pure sadness.

Brother Simon was staring at the altar. At the two men still there.

The prior. And the abbot.

Who was this profound sadness for? Which man? Or, the Chief wondered, maybe it was for the monastery itself. Sadness that Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups had lost more than a man. It had lost its way.

Dom Philippe paused before the large wooden cross and bowed deeply. He was alone now, on the raised altar. Except for the body of his prior. His friend.

The abbot held his bow.

Was it longer, Gamache wondered, than usual? Was the effort of getting back up, of turning around, of facing the evening, the next day, the next year, the rest of life too much? Was the gravity too much?

Slowly the abbot raised himself to a standing position. He even seemed to square his shoulders, standing as tall as he could.

Then he turned and saw something he’d never seen before.

People in the pews.

The abbot had no idea why there were even pews in the Blessed Chapel. They’d been there when he’d arrived, forty years earlier, and they’d be there long after he was buried.

He’d never questioned why a cloistered order needed pews.

In his pocket Dom Philippe felt the rosary beads, his fingers running over them without conscious thought. They offered a comfort that he also never questioned.

“Chief Inspector,” he said as he stepped off the altar and approached the men.

“Dom Philippe.” Gamache bowed slightly. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to take him away now.” Gamache gestured toward the prior, then turned and nodded to Beauvoir.

“I understand,” said Dom Philippe, though he privately realized he understood none of this. “Follow me.”

Dom Philippe signaled Frère Luc, who hurried over, and the three men made for the corridor that led to the locked door. Beauvoir and Captain Charbonneau followed, carrying the stretcher with Frère Mathieu.

Beauvoir heard something behind him, a shuffling, and looked.

The monks had formed two rows and were following them like a long, black tail.

“We tried to find you earlier, Père Abbé, ” said the Chief, “but couldn’t. Where were you?”

“In Chapter.”

“And where is Chapter?”

“It’s both a place and an event, Chief Inspector. The room is just over there,” the abbot waved toward the wall of the Blessed Chapel, just as they walked through the door and into the long corridor.

“I saw you coming out of there,” said Gamache, “but when we looked earlier we didn’t find a door.”

“No. It’s behind a plaque commemorating Saint Gilbert.”

“It’s a hidden door?”

The abbot, even in profile, looked puzzled and a little surprised by the question.

“Not from us,” he finally said. “Everyone knows it’s there. It’s no secret.”

“Then why not just have a door?”

“Because anyone who needs to know about it does,” he said, not looking at Gamache, but looking toward the closed door ahead of them. “And anyone who doesn’t need to know should not find it.”

“So it is meant to be hidden,” said Gamache, pressing the point.

“The option is meant to be there,” admitted the abbot. They’d arrived at the locked door to the outside world. He finally turned to look directly at Gamache. “If we need to hide, the room exists.”

“But why would you need to hide?”

The abbot smiled a little. It was just this side of condescending. “I’d have thought you of all people would know why, Chief Inspector. It’s because the world is not always kind. We all need a safe place, sometimes.”

“And yet the threat, finally, didn’t come from the world,” said Gamache.

“True.”

Gamache considered for a moment. “So you concealed the door to your Chapter room in the wall of the chapel?”

“I didn’t put it there. All this was done long before I came. The men who built the monastery did it. It was a different time. A brutal time. When monks really did need to hide.”

Gamache nodded, and looked at the thick wooden door in front of them. The gateway to the outside world. That was still locked, even after the passage of centuries.

He knew the abbot was right. Back when the massive tree was cut down for this door, hundreds of years ago, it wasn’t tradition but necessity that turned the key in the lock. The Reformation, the Inquisition, the internecine battles. It was a dangerous time to be a Catholic. And, as with recent events, the threat often came from within.

And so, in Europe priest’s holes were built into homes. Tunnels dug for escape.

Some had escaped so far they popped up in the New World. And even that wasn’t far enough. The Gilbertines had gone even further. They disappeared into the blank spot on the map.

Vanished.

To reappear more than three hundred years later. On the radio.

The voices of an order everyone had thought was extinct were heard first by a few, then by hundreds, then by thousands and hundreds of thousands. Then, thanks to the Internet, finally millions of people listened to the odd little recording.

Of monks chanting.

The recording had become a sensation. Suddenly their Gregorian chants were everywhere. De rigueur . Deemed a “must listen” by the intelligentsia, by the cognoscenti, and finally, by the masses.