Secret of the Seventh Son

17 SEPTEMBER 782

I t was harvest time, perhaps Josephus’s favorite season, when the days were pleasantly warm, the nights cool and comfortable, and the air was filled with the earthy smells of newly scythed wheat and barley and fresh apples. He gave thanks for the bountiful proceeds from the fields surrounding the abbey walls. The brothers would be able to restock the dwindling stores in the granary and fill their oaken barrels with fresh ale. While he abhorred gluttony, he begrudged the rationing of beer that inevitably occurred by midsummer.

The conversion of the church from wood to stone was three years complete. The square, tapering tower rose up high enough for boats and ships approaching the island to use as a navigational aide. The squared-off chancel at the eastern end had low, triangular windows that beautifully illuminated the sanctuary during the Offices of the day. The nave was long enough not only for the present community, but the monastery would be able to accommodate a greater number of Christ’s servants in the future. Josephus often sought forgiveness and did penance for the pride that bubbled up in his chest for the role he played in its construction. True, his knowledge of the world was limited, but he imagined the church at Vectis to be among the great cathedrals of Christendom.

Of late, the masons had been hard at work finishing the new Chapter House. Josephus and Oswyn had decided the Scriptorium would be next and that the structure would have to be greatly expanded. The Bibles and rules books they produced, and the illustrated Epistles of St. Peter written in golden ink, were highly regarded and Josephus had heard that copies made their way across the waters to Eire, Italia, and Francia.

It was mid-morning, approaching the third hour, and he was on his way from the lavatorium to the refectory for a chunk of brown bread, a joint of mutton, some salt, and a flagon of ale. His stomach was rumbling in eager anticipation, as Oswyn had imposed a restriction of only one meal a day to strengthen the spirit of his congregation by weakening the desires of their flesh. After a prolonged period of meditation and personal fasting, which the frail abbot himself could scarcely afford, Oswyn shared his revelation with the entire community which had dutifully assembled in the Chapter House. “We must fast daily as we must feed daily,” he declared. “We must gratify the body more poorly and sparingly.”

So they all became thinner.

Josephus heard his name called. Guthlac, a huge rough man who had been a soldier before joining the monastery, caught up with him at a run, his sandals slapping on the path.

“Prior,” he said. “Ubertus the stonecutter is at the gate. He wishes to speak with you at once.”

“I am on my way to the refectory for supper,” Josephus objected. “Do you not feel he can wait?”

“He said it is urgent,” Guthlac said, hurrying off.

“And where are you going?” Josephus called after him.

“To the refectory, Prior. For my supper.”

Ubertus was inside the gate near the entrance to the Hospicium, the guest house for visitors and travelers, a low timber building with rows of simple cots. He was rooted to a spot on the ground, his feet unmoving. From a distance Josephus thought he was alone, but as he approached he saw a child behind the mason, two small legs visible between his tree-trunk legs.

“How may I help you, Ubertus?” Josephus asked.

“I have brought the child.”

Josephus didn’t understand.

Ubertus reached behind and pulled the boy into sight. He was a barefoot, tiny lad, thin as a twig with bright ginger hair. His shirt was dirty and in tatters, exposing a ladder of ribs and a pigeon chest. His trousers were too long, hand-me-downs that he had not yet grown to fit. His fine skin was parchment white, his staring eyes green like precious stones, and his delicate face as immobile as one of his father’s blocks of stone. He was tightly pressing his blanched pink lips together, and the effort to do so tensed and puckered his chin.

Josephus had heard about the boy but never laid eyes on him. He found him an unsettling sight. There was a cold madness about him, a sense that his small raw life had not been blessed by the warmth of God. His name, Octavus, the eighth, had been bestowed on him by Ubertus the night of his birth. Unlike his twin, an abomination who was better destroyed, his life would be blissfully ordinary, would it not? After all, the eighth son of a seventh son is but another son even if born on the seventh day of the seventh month of the 777th year after the birth of the Lord. Ubertus prayed he would become strong and productive, a stonecutter like his father and his brothers.

“Why have you brought him?” Josephus asked.

“I want you to take him.”

“Why would I take your son?”

“I cannot keep him any longer.”

“But you have daughters to care for him. You have food for your table.”

“He needs Christ. Christ is here.”

“But Christ is everywhere.”

“Nowhere stronger than here, Prior.”

The boy dropped to his knees and stuck his bony finger into the dirt. He began moving it around in little circles, carving a pattern in the soil, but his father reached down and yanked him by his hair to stand him up. The boy flinched but did not make a sound, despite the ferocity of the tug.

“The boy needs Christ,” his father insisted. “I wish to dedicate him to religious life.”

Josephus had heard talk of the boy being a strange one, mute, seemingly absorbed in his own world, completely without interest in his brothers and sisters or other village children. He had been wet-nursed, although he’d fed poorly, and even now at five years of age he ate sparingly and without gusto. In his heart, Josephus was not surprised at how the boy had turned out. After all, he had witnessed this child’s remarkable entrance into the world with his own eyes.

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.

18 12 782 Natus

The men shook their heads in confusion. Paulinus said, “These are not normal letters but once again here is the date.”

Josephus suddenly caught himself and realized they were to be late for mass, an inexcusable sin. “Hide the parchments and the ink and leave the boy in the corner. Come, Paulinus, let us make haste to the Sanctuary. We will pray to God to help us understand what we have seen and beg for him to cleanse us of evil.”

That night, Josephus and Paulinus met in the chilly brewery and lit a fat candle for light. Josephus felt the need for an ale to calm his nerves and settle his stomach, and Paulinus was willing to humor his old friend. They drew a pair of stools close to one another, their knees almost knocking.

Josephus considered himself a simple man who understood only the love of God and the Rules of St. Benedict of Nursia that all ministers of God were obliged to follow. However, he knew Paulinus to be a sharp thinker and a learned scholar who had read many texts concerning the heavens and the earth. If anyone could explain what they had seen earlier, it was Paulinus.

Yet Paulinus was unwilling to offer an explanation. Instead he suggested a mission, and the two men schemed about how best to accomplish it. They agreed to keep their knowledge of the boy secret, for what good could possibly come in upsetting the community before Paulinus could divine the truth?

When Josephus had drained the last of his ale, Paulinus reached for the candle. Just before he blew it out he told Josephus something that had been on his mind.

“You know,” he said, “there is nothing to say that in the case of twins, the seventh son to be born of a woman is, by necessity, the seventh son that God had conceived.”

Ubertus rode through the countryside of Wessex on the mission that Prior Josephus had pressed on him. He felt an unlikely servant for the task but was beholden to Josephus and could not refuse him.

The heavy, sweating animal between his legs warmed his body against the crisp chill of the mid-December day. He was not a good rider. Stonecutters were used to slow speeds in an ox-drawn cart. He gripped the reins tightly, pressed his knees against the belly of the beast and held on as best he could. The horse was a healthy animal that the monastery kept stabled on the mainland, just for this kind of purpose. A ferryman had rowed Ubertus from the shingled beach of Vectis to the Wessex shore. Josephus had instructed him to make haste and return within two days, which meant the horse must be made to canter.

As the day wore on the sky turned slate gray, a hue akin to the rocky face of the coastal undercliffs. He rode at pace through a frosty countryside of fallow fields, low stone walls, and tiny villages, much like his own. Occasionally he passed dull-looking peasants, trudging on foot or riding lethargic mules. He was mindful of thieves but in truth his only possessions of value were the horse itself and the few small coins that Josephus had given him for the journey.

He arrived in Tisbury just before sundown. It was a prosperous town with several large timber houses and a multitude of neat cottages lining a broad street. On a central green, sheep huddled in the gloom. He rode past a small wooden church, a solitary structure on the edge of the green, which stood cold and dark. Beside it was a small burial ground with signs of a fresh grave. He quickly crossed himself. The air was filled with smoky hearth fires, and Ubertus was distracted from the burial mound by the delicious odors of charred meat and burning fat everywhere.

Today had been market day, and there were still carts and produce stalls in the square not yet removed because their owners remained in the tavern drinking and throwing dice. Ubertus dismounted at the tavern door. A boy took notice and offered to hold his reins. For one of his coins, the boy led the horse away for a bucket of oats and a trough of water.

Ubertus entered the warm crowded tavern and his senses were assaulted by a din of drunken voices and the smells of stale ale, sweating bodies, and piss. He stood before the blazing peat fire, revived his cramped hands and called out in his thick Italian accent for a jug of wine. Since it was a market town, the men of Tisbury were well-used to strangers, and they received him with cheerful curiosity. A group of men called him to their table and he fell into an animated conversation about where he hailed from and why he had come to town.

It took Ubertus under an hour to pour three jugs of wine down his throat and obtain the knowledge he had been sent to discover.

Sister Magdalena usually walked through the abbey grounds at a deliberate pace, not too slowly, as that would be wasteful of time, but not too speedily, as that would create the impression that something on this earth was more important than the contemplation of God.

Today she ran, clutching something in her hand.

A few days of warmer air had thinned the snow to a patchy shell, and the paths were well-trampled and no longer slippery.

In the Scriptorium, Josephus and Paulinus sat alone in silence. They had dismissed the copyists so they could meet privately with Ubertus, who had returned from his mission, cold and exhausted.

Ubertus was no longer there, having been sent back to his village with a grim thanks and a benediction.

His report was simple and sobering.

On the eighteenth day of December, three days earlier, a child was born in the town of Tisbury to Wuffa the tanner and his wife Eanfled.

The child’s name was Sigbert.

While neither would openly admit it, they were not shocked by the news. They half expected to hear as much since it was scarcely possible that the fantastic circumstances of a mute boy born to a dead mother who could, without tuition, write names and dates, could grow more fantastic.

When Ubertus was gone, Paulinus had said to Josephus, “The boy was the seventh son, of this there can be no doubt. He has a profound power.”

“Is it for good or evil?” Josephus asked shakily.

Paulinus looked at his friend, puckered his mouth but did not answer.

Without warning, Sister Magdalena burst in.

“Brother Otto told me you were here,” she said, breathing heavily and slamming the door behind her.

Josephus and Paulinus exchanged conspiratorial glances. “Indeed we are, Sister,” Josephus said. “Is there something troubling you?”

“This!” She thrust her hand forward. There was a rolled parchment in her fist. “One of the sisters found this in the children’s dormitory under the pallet of Octavus’s bed. He has stolen it from the Scriptorium, I have no doubt. Can you confirm it?”

Josephus unrolled the parchment and inspected it along with Paulinus.

Kal ba Lakna

21 12 782 Natus

Flavius de Napoli

21 12 782 Natus

CNMEOH

21 12 782 Natus

21 12 782 Mors

Juan de Madrid

21 12 782 Natus

Josephus looked up from the first page. It was written in Octavus’s tight scrawl.

“That one is in Hebrew, I recognize the script,” Paulinus whispered to him, pointing at one of the entries. “I do not know the origin of the one above it.”

“Well?” the sister demanded. “Can you confirm the boy has stolen this?”

“Please sit, Sister.” Josephus sighed.

“I do not wish to sit, Prior, I wish to know the truth and then I wish to severely punish this boy.”

“I beg you to sit.”

She reluctantly sat upon one of the copying benches.

“The parchment was certainly stolen,” Josephus began.

“The wicked boy! But what is this text? It seems a strange listing.”

“It contains names,” Josephus said.

“In more than a single language,” Paulinus added.

“What is its purpose and why is Oswyn included?” she asked suspiciously.

“Oswyn?” Josephus asked.

“The second page, the second page!” she said.

Josephus looked at the second sheet.

Oswyn of Vectis

21 12 782 Mors

The blood drained from Josephus’s face. “My God!”

Paulinus rose and turned away to hide his expression of alarm.

“Which of the brothers wrote this?” Magdalena demanded to know.

“None of them, Sister,” Josephus said.

“Then who wrote it?”

“The boy, Octavus.”

Josephus lost count of the number of times Sister Magdalena crossed herself as he and Paulinus told her what they knew of Octavus and his miraculous ability. Finally, when they were done and there was no more to be told, the three of them exchanged nervous looks.

“Surely this is the work of the Devil,” Magdalena said, breaking the quiet.

Paulinus said, “There is an alternative explanation.”

“And that is?” she asked.

“The work of the Lord.” Paulinus chose his words carefully. “Surely, there can be no doubt that the Lord chooses when to bring a child into this world and when to reclaim a soul to his bosom. God knows all. He knows when a simple man calls out to him in prayer, he knows when a sparrow falls from the sky. This boy, who is unlike all others in the manner of his birth and his countenance, how do we know he is not a vessel of the Lord to record the comings and goings of God’s children?”

“But he may be the seventh son of a seventh son!” Magdalena hissed.

“Yes, we know of the beliefs concerning such a being. But who has met such a man before? And who has met one born on the seventh day of the seventh month of the year 777? We cannot presume to know that his powers have an evil purpose.”

“I, for one, cannot see an evil consequence of the boy’s powers,” Josephus said hopefully.

Magdalena’s demeanor changed from fear to anger. “If what you say is true, we know that our dear abbot will die on this very day. I pray to the Lord that this is not so. How can you say that this is not evil?” She rose and snatched up the parchment pages. “I will not hold secrets from the abbot. He must hear of this, and he-and he alone-must decide on the boy’s fate.”

She was determined, and neither Paulinus or Josephus were inclined to dissuade Sister Magdalena from her actions.

The three of them approached Oswyn after None, the mid-afternoon prayer, and accompanied him to his chambers in the Chapter House. There, in the dimming light of a wintry afternoon, the embers of his fire glowing amber, they told him their tale as each tried to study his pinched face, which because of his deformity angled down toward his table.

He listened. He studied the parchments, pausing for a moment to reflect on his own name. He asked questions and considered the responses. Then he signaled that the caucus was over by striking his fist on the table once.

“I cannot see good coming of this,” he said. “At worst, it is the hand of the Devil. At best, it is a severe distraction to the religious life of this community. We are here to serve God with all our heart and all our might. This boy will divert us from our mission. You must cast him out.”

At that, Magdalena suppressed a show of satisfaction.

Josephus cleared his dry throat. “His father will not take him back. There is no place for him to go.”

“That is not our concern,” the abbot said. “Send him away.”

“It is cold,” Josephus implored. “He will not survive the night.”

“The Lord will provide for him and decide his fate,” the abbot said. “Now, leave me to contemplate my own.”

It was left to Josephus to do the deed, and after sundown he dutifully led the boy by the hand to the front gate of the abbey. A kind young sister had put heavy socks on his feet and wrapped him in an extra shirt and a small cloak. A cutting wind off the sea was pushing the temperature to the freezing point.

Josephus unlatched the gate and swung it open. They were hit squarely by a strong cold gust. The prior gently nudged the boy forward. “You must leave us, Octavus. But do not fear, God will protect you.”

The boy did not turn to look back but faced the dark void of night with his immutable blank stare. It broke the prior’s heart to treat one of God’s creatures harshly, so harshly that he was likely condemning the child to a freezing death. And not an ordinary child but one with an extraordinary gift that, if Paulinus was correct, came not from the depths of Hell but perhaps from the realm of Heaven. But Josephus was an obedient servant, his first allegiance to God, whose opinion on this matter was not apparent to him, and his next allegiance to his abbot, whose opinion was clear as a windowpane.

Josephus shuddered and closed the gate behind him.

The bell rang for Vespers. The congregation assembled in the Sanctuary. Sister Magdalena held her lute to her chest and basked in her victory over Josephus, whom she scorned for his softness.

Paulinus’s mind swirled with theological ideas about Octavus-whether his powers were gift or curse.

Josephus’s eyes stung with salty tears at the thought of the frail little boy alone in the cold and dark. He felt intense guilt at his own warmth and comfort. Yet Oswyn, he was sure, was correct on one notion: the boy was indeed a distraction from his duties of prayer and servitude.

They waited for the shuffling steps of the abbot, which failed to materialize. Josephus could see the brothers and sisters shifting nervously, all of them keenly aware of Oswyn’s punctuality.

After a few minutes Josephus became alarmed and whispered to Paulinus, “We must check on the abbot.” All eyes followed them as they left. Whispers filled the Sanctuary, but Magdalena put a stop to them with a finger to her lips and a loud shush.

Oswyn’s chamber was cold and dark, the untended fire nearly spent. They found him curled and bent on his bed, fully dressed in his robes, his skin as cool as the room air. In his right hand he clutched the parchment upon which his name was written.

“Merciful God!” Josephus cried.

“The prophesy-” Paulinus muttered, falling to his knees.

The two men mouthed quick prayers over Oswyn’s body, then rose.

“The bishop must be informed,” Paulinus said.

Josephus nodded. “I will send a messenger to Dorchester in the morning.”

“Until the bishop says otherwise, you must lead this abbey, my friend.”

Josephus crossed himself, digging his finger into his chest as he made the sign. “Go tell Sister Magdalena and ask her to begin Vespers. I will be there shortly, but first there is something I must do.”

Josephus ran through the darkness to the abbey gate, his chest heaving with exertion. He pushed it open and it squeaked on its hinges.

The boy was not there.

He ran down the path, frantically calling his name.

There was a small shape by the road.

Octavus had not gone far. He was sitting quietly in the frigid night, shivering at the edge of a field. Josephus tenderly picked him up in his arms and carried him back toward the gate.

“You can stay, boy,” he said. “God wants you to stay.”