Louise Penny - The Beautiful Mystery

Ecce homo .

The words were familiar to Gamache, but he couldn’t call them up.

“What does it mean?”

“It’s what Pontius Pilate said to the mob,” said Frère Sébastien. “He brought Jesus out, bleeding, to show them.”

“Show them what? What does it mean?” Gamache repeated, looking from Dominican to Gilbertine and back again.

“ Ecce homo ,” said the abbot. “He is man.”

It was almost nine in the evening, late by monastery standards, and Frère Sébastien left the three men and walked toward the cells. Frère Antoine waited a minute, for the Dominican to disappear, then after a brief bow to the abbot, he also left.

“Things have changed,” observed Gamache.

Instead of denying that there was ever a problem, Dom Philippe simply nodded and watched the younger man stride off toward the door at the far end of the chapel.

“He’ll make a wonderful choirmaster. Perhaps even better than Mathieu.” The abbot’s eyes returned to Gamache. “Frère Antoine loves the chants, but he loves God more.”

The Chief nodded. Yes. That was at the heart of this mystery, he thought. Not hate. But love.

“And the prior?” asked Gamache as he walked the abbot to his rooms. “What did he love more?”

“The music.” The answer was swift and unequivocal. “But it isn’t quite that simple.” The abbot smiled. “As you might have noticed, few things here are actually simple.”

Gamache also smiled. He had noticed.

They were in the long corridor leading to the abbot’s office and cell. Where at first it had seemed perfectly straight from one end to the other, now he thought he noticed a very slight curve. Dom Clément might have drawn a straight line, but his builders had erred, ever so slightly. As anyone who’d built a bookcase, or tried to follow a detailed map, knew, an infinitesimal error at the beginning can become a massive mistake later on.

Even the corridors here, he reflected, weren’t as simple, as straight, as they appeared.

“For Mathieu there was no separation between the music and his faith. They were one and the same,” said the abbot. His pace had slowed and now they were barely moving down the darkened hallway. “The music magnified his faith. Took it to levels of near ecstasy.”

“Levels few achieve?”

The abbot was quiet.

“Levels you’ve never achieved?” Gamache pushed.

“I’m more the slow and steady type,” said the abbot, looking straight ahead as they walked the slightly flawed path. “Not given to soaring.”

“But neither do you fall?”

“We can all fall,” said the abbot.

“But perhaps not as hard and not as fast and not as far as someone who spends his life on the ascent.”

Again the abbot lapsed into silence.

“You obviously adore the Gregorian chants,” said Gamache. “But unlike the prior, you separate them from your faith?”

The abbot nodded. “I hadn’t thought about it until this happened, but yes, I do. If the music was somehow taken away tomorrow. If I could no longer sing, or listen to the chants, my love of God would be unchanged.”

“Not so with Frère Mathieu?”

“I wonder.”

“Who was his confessor?”

“I was. Until recently.”

“Who was his new confessor?”

“Frère Antoine.”

Now their slow progress stopped completely.

“Can you tell me what Frère Mathieu said, in his confessions to you? Before he switched confessors?”

“You know I can’t.”

“Even though the prior is dead?”

The abbot studied Gamache. “Surely you know the answer to that. Has any priest ever agreed to break the seal of the confessional for you?”

Gamache shook his head. “No, mon père . But I’ll never give up hope.”

That brought a smile to the abbot’s face.

“When did the prior switch to Frère Antoine?”

“About six months ago.” The abbot looked resigned. “I wasn’t completely honest with you.” He looked directly into Gamache’s eyes. “I’m sorry. Mathieu and I did have a disagreement about the chants, and that grew into an argument about the direction of the monastery and the community.”

“He wanted another recording, and for Saint-Gilbert to be more open to the outside world.”

“ Oui . And I believe we need to stay on course.”

“A steady hand on the tiller,” said the Chief, nodding approval. Though both men knew, if you were heading into the rocks, a quick turn was often necessary.

“But there was another outstanding issue,” said Gamache. They’d started walking again, toward the closed door at the end of the corridor. “The foundations.”

Gamache had taken a step forward before he realized the abbot was no longer beside him. The Chief turned and saw Dom Philippe staring at him, surprised.

It seemed to Gamache that the abbot was on the verge of another lie, but in the breath he took before speaking he seemed to change his mind.

“You know about that?”

“Frère Raymond told Inspector Beauvoir. It’s true, then.”

The abbot nodded.

“Did anyone else know?” Gamache asked.

“I told no one.”

“Not even your prior?”

“A year ago, eighteen months ago, he’d have been the first person I told, but not now. I kept it to myself. Told God, but he already knew, of course.”

“Might have even put the cracks there,” suggested Gamache.

The abbot looked at the Chief, but said nothing.

“Is that why you were in the basement yesterday morning?” asked Gamache. “Not to examine the geothermal, but to look at the foundations?”

The abbot nodded and they began their slow progress again, neither man in a hurry to reach the door.

“I waited until Frère Raymond was gone. I’m afraid I didn’t need to hear him go on and on about the impending disaster. I just needed some quiet time to look for myself.”

“And what did you see?”

“Roots,” he said, his voice a study of neutrality. A plainchant voice, monotone. No inflection. No emotion. Just fact. “The cracks are getting worse. I’d marked where they’d been the last time I looked, a week or so ago. They’ve widened since then.”

“You might have even less time than you’d hoped?”

“We might,” Dom Philippe admitted.

“So what do you do about it?”

“I pray.”

“That’s it?”

“And what do you do, Chief Inspector, when all seems lost?”

Take this child .

“I pray too,” he said.

“And does it work?”

“Sometimes,” said Gamache. Jean-Guy hadn’t died that dreadful day in the factory. Covered in blood, gasping in pain. Eyes pleading for Gamache to stay. To do something. To save him. Gamache had prayed. And Beauvoir hadn’t been taken. But neither, Gamache knew, had he returned. Not completely. Beauvoir was still caught between worlds.

“But is all lost?” he asked the abbot. “Frère Raymond seems to think another recording would bring in enough money to fix the foundations. But you have to act quickly.”

“Frère Raymond is right. But he also sees only the cracks. I see the whole monastery. The whole community. What good would it do to fix the cracks but lose our real foundation? Our vows aren’t negotiable.”

Gamache saw then what Frère Raymond must have seen. What the prior must have seen. A man who would not budge. Unlike the monastery, there were no cracks in the abbot. He was immovable, at least on this subject.

If the last Gilbertine monastery was to be saved it would have to be by divine intervention. Unless, as Frère Raymond believed, their miracle had been offered and the abbot, blinded by pride, had missed it.

“I have a favor to ask, Père Abbé .”