Book of Souls

Chapter 25

It was autumn when John Cantwell finally set out on the quest that had consumed him ever since the night he drunkenly conceived it. Then, he was warm and dry in his father’s library. Now, the crossing of the Solent was treacherous, and he was shivering and sea-splashed.

A stiff gale was blowing from the mainland toward the Isle of Wight, and the captain of the sailing ferry had to be persuaded with a few extra shillings to make the passage that day. John was not a seafaring man, and he spent the brief journey heaving over the gunwales. At Cowes harbor, he made straight for the roughest public house he could find to buy himself a drink, converse with the oldest men he could find, and hire a couple of locals with strong backs.

He did not bother to buy himself a bed for the night because he was planning on toiling while most men slept. During the course of the evening, he consumed a good many tankards of ale and a large bowl of cheap stew, and, thus fortified, he waited in the moonlight for his hired men to return with picks and shovels and coils of rope. At midnight, the entourage of John Cantwell and three burly islanders wielding oily torches left the tavern and headed down a footpath through the woods.

They were never more than a few hundred yards from the pounded shore. Nearby, the gulls called, the waves rhythmically crashed on the beach, and the salty, fresh breezes off the Solent sobered John and cleared his head. It was a cool night, and for warmth he clasped his fur-collared cloak over his high-collared doublet and pulled his cap down over the tops of his ears. His laborers led the way, whispering among themselves, and he gave himself to his own thoughts, daydreaming of wealth and power.

The old-timers at the tavern had been suspicious and taciturn until he loosened their lips with drink and coin. The Vectis Abbey was a ruined shell of its former self, he was told, done in during King Henry’s days by Cromwell’s henchmen. Like almost every Holy Roman church in the land, it had been sacked and looted, and the villagers and townsfolk of the island given license to use its stones for building works. The population of monks had largely dispersed, but there were diehards who lingered, and to this day, a small group of Benedictines stubbornly tied themselves to the ruins.

The old men knew nothing about any ruins of an ancient library, and they shook their heads and scoffed at the rich mainlander’s questions. Yet when pressed, one grizzled fisherman did recall that as a boy he had walked the abbey fields with his grandfather and had scampered into a grassy hollow, a large, depressed squarish plot. His grandfather had shouted at him to return to his side and had batted him with his walking stick, warning him to say away from the spot as legend had it, it was haunted ground, populated by the ghosts of hooded black-robed monks.

To John, this seemed a promising place to begin his quest, and he made it his nocturnal destination.

The footpath opened into a field, and, by the light of the moon, the Cathedral of Vectis came into view. Even in ruins, it was an imposing structure, grand in scale. As he drew closer, he could see that there was no longer a spire, and the walls were half-gone. The windows that remained had no glass, and long grass and weeds had crept into open door-frames. There were other low buildings, some in shambles, some intact. From one row of stone cottages, wisps of fireplace smoke rose from a chimney. They gave these dwellings a wide berth and circled around them toward a more distant field closer to the shore.

The laborers knew the whereabouts of the sunken ground, and they grumbled as they approached it. They had been unaware the patch of land had a taint, but the words of the old fisherman carried some weight, and they were nervous.

John took one of the torches and inspected the area. In the dark, it was hard to appreciate its boundaries. The tall grass sloped down into a flat depression not more than two feet below the level of the rest of the field. There were no visible features, no reason to favor one spot above another. He shrugged his shoulders and at random chose the ground beneath his feet. He called the men and bade them dig.

When the laborers hesitated at the edge of the hollow, John had to begrudgingly offer more compensation. But when they commenced their work, they proceeded at a furious pace, slicing through the sod into the rich, soft soil. Two of them had been grave diggers, and they were capable of shifting dirt prodigiously. In an hour, there was a good-sized hole; in two hours it was large and deep. John squatted on the edge watching, occasionally jumping down and having a closer look by torchlight. The soil was moist and brown with a fertile, earthy smell, but in time he took note of some lumps of charred wood and a layer of ash.

His heart raced. “There was a fire here,” he exclaimed.

The men were disinterested. One of them asked how much deeper he wanted them to go. He replied by telling them to quiet themselves and keep digging.

Over the sound of the gulls, John heard a clink.

A shovel had struck stone.

John jumped back into the hole and scraped at the ground with his boot, exposing a flat stone. He grabbed one of the shovels and scraped it clean then thrust the shovel into the dirt two feet away. He hit more stone. He picked another spot and dug-more stone. “Clear the whole bottom of the ditch!” he commanded excitedly.

Soon, a surface of flat, smooth stones was exposed, a carefully fitted floor, long buried. John exhorted the men to take a pick to the stones to see what lay beneath. The laborers engaged in a nervously whispered debate among themselves but complied, and within a half hour, three of the large, flat stones had been dug out.

John got down on his hands and knees to inspect the area. With growing eagerness, he saw that the stones had been resting on a large-timbered frame. He gingerly placed his hand through the hole where the stones had been, and it went straight through, his entire arm disappearing. He took a handful of dirt and dropped it through the hole. It took a full second or more to hear the dirt rattling against something hard.

“There is a chamber below!” John declared. “We must climb down at once!”

The men began to back away to the farthest corner of their trench. They huddled and spoke to each other in low, urgent voices, then declared they would not go down. They were too afraid.

John begged them, then tried to bribe them and finally, in a rage he threatened them, but it was to no avail. They swore at him and climbed out of the trench. The best he could do was to get them to sell him their rope and leave a torch. In short order, he was alone in the night.

His apprehension was tempered by the excitement of the moment. He tied the rope around one of the timber beams, dropped it into the hole, and heard the loose end hitting solid ground. Next he tossed the lit torch down the hole and listened to it clatter. The torch stayed lit, and, looking into the void, he could see a zone faintly illuminated, a stone floor and perhaps an irregular wall. He took a deep breath to steel himself for the task, swung his legs into the hole, grabbed the rope, and began to use his arms and clenched feet to work his way downward.

The air in the chamber was stale and lifeless. He descended by inches, fearful of the dark, so he concentrated on the more reassuring glow of the torch. When he had descended about twenty feet, there was still another ten to go. He looked down and squinted through the particulate smoke emanating from the torch head.

“Ayyyy!”

His scream echoed in his ears as he lost his grip and fell hard to the floor, landing in a pile of brittle human skeletons. His feet landed on leg bones and slid out from under him, which saved him from breaking his own legs. His right hip crashed down on a skull, which crumbled under his weight.

He lay on the stone floor, gasping in pain and shock, eye to eye with empty eye sockets.

“God save me!” he cried.

He swung his head around and saw yellow bones everywhere: on the floor and stacked high in stone shelves in the walls. He was in a crypt, of that there could be no doubt. A second wave of panic hit when he realized that if he were badly injured, he would be unable to climb back to the surface. He might wind up lying there for eternity, one more pile of bones. He pushed himself to a sitting position and took stock of his limbs.

His arms and legs could move well enough, but there was sharp pain in his right hip. The only way he could gauge the extent of the injury was to try to bear weight on it so he rocked himself to his knees then straightened himself to a standing position. He gradually put pressure on his right leg and mercifully it held and he was relieved to conclude that it was bruised but not fractured. He took a step forward and heard the sickening sound of cracking bones under his boots, but he successfully limped to the torch and picked it up.

John painfully shuffled through the crypt, stepping around bones, inuring himself to the presence of so much death. There were hundreds of corpses, thousands, perhaps, some bare skeletons, some desiccated and mummified with remnants of reddish hair and adherent brown cloth. He tried to remain focused on the prize. Did Felix’s Library still exist? He had no idea whether he was heading deeper into the cryptorium or in a more productive direction, but he committed to a path and slowly made his way by the light of the torch.

The arc of light found an archway, and, wincing at his painful hip, John quickened his pace almost as if he were fleeing the skeletons. He moved through the archway and found himself in altogether different environs.

He was in a large room, the edges indistinct to his eyes. A few feet away was the edge of a wooden table. He approached it and saw that it was a long table with a low bench on one side of it. He followed it along, touching its cool smooth surface with wonder. There were objects on the table, and he handled the first one he encountered. It was an earthenware inkpot! He lifted the torch over his head to cast its light farther. There were other tables, in rows!

It was then he noticed the stone floor, stained in blotches everywhere. Rust brown. Ancient blood. There had been buckets of blood.

It is true, he thought with a rush of exhilaration. The Felix letter spoke the truth, and, more importantly, the monks’ Scriptorium had survived the conflagration! If it survived, the Library might have survived too!

He followed the row of tables, touching each one as he passed. There were fifteen. Behind the last one, he was momentarily disappointed to see only a wall, but his heart sped again when he saw a wooden door with heavy iron fittings. He pulled the enormously heavy door open with all his might and shined his torch in.

He immediately fell to his knees and began to weep with joy.

The Library! It existed! It survived!

To his left was a great wooden case, filled with enormous leather-bound volumes. To his right was an identical stack and in between the two was a corridor just wide enough for him to pass.

He regained his feet and limped, awestruck, down the central corridor. On both sides were high bookcases that seemed to go on into the darkness forever.

He paused and pulled out one of the books. It was identical in every way to the Cantwell volume, though this one was dated 1043. He put it back and kept moving forward. How far did the chamber go?

He kept walking for what seemed an amazingly long while. Besides the great abbeys and palaces of London, he had never been in such an enormous structure. Finally, he saw another wall. There was another archway through it, and he kept on his straight path. As he crossed the threshold, he thought he heard a small rustling.

Rats?

He was in a second vault, seemingly identical to the first. Vast bookcases lined the corridor, plunging into the blackness. He checked the spines in the nearest case-1457. His mind raced. Now that he had found the Library, how would he reap its harvest? He needed to find the books for 1581 and beyond. That was where the profit lay. He would have to figure out how he might haul the precious booty out of the hole. He was completely unprepared for success, but he had confidence in his cleverness and was certain he would be able to fashion a plan once his heart stopped beating in his throat.

At each successive case he stopped to check dates. When he spied a book dated 1573, he turned to his right and headed deeply into the stacks.

There-1575, 1577, 1580, and, finally, 1581. The present! There were a dozen or more books engraved with the current year. He stood before them, shaking like a cornered rabbit.

Before him was the ultimate power in the world, the power to see the future. No one on the earth but John Cantwell had the power to say who would be born and who would die. His chest puffed out in pride. His father was wrong. He had, indeed, made something of himself. He reached slowly and deliberately for one of the books.

He never saw the blow coming, never felt pain, never felt anything again.

The rock caved in his skull and his brain filled instantly with a killing tide of blood. He crumpled on the spot like a child’s rag-filled doll.

Brother Michael called to his companion a few paces behind in the dark. “It is done. He is dead.”

“God forgive us,” Brother Emmanuel said, standing over the body and picking up the torch before it could ignite the books on the lowest shelf. They both dropped to their knees and prayed.

The young monks had spied the diggers passing their quarters and had followed them through the night and watched from afar as they worked the earth. When the local men fled, they had stayed to follow the activities of the remaining gentleman. When he climbed down a rope into the earth, they crossed themselves and quiet as snakes, slithering through the grass, followed him down.

Brother Michael was angry that the monastery had been invaded and angrier still that he had been compelled to take a life. “What is this place?” he spat.

His companion was a few years older, less of a physical sort, more cerebral. “Surely an ancient, sacred library, created by the brothers who lie peacefully in the crypt. It was sealed for a purpose, what, I cannot fathom. It is not meant for us. It was most assuredly not meant for this vile intruder. Taking a life is a great sin, but God will forgive us.”

“Let us take our leave,” Michael said. “I say we seal the hole, fill in the ditch, and say nothing of this to the others. Will you keep the secret with me, Brother?”

“In the name of our Lord, I will.”

They left John Cantwell’s corpse to lie where it fell and used his torch to find their way back to the rope. The body began its long, slow desiccation, and it would not be seen again by human eyes for 366 years.

A month passed, then another and another. Every morning Edgar Cantwell asked whether anyone in the household had heard anything of his son, John.

The autumn turned to winter, the winter to spring, and the old man incrementally came to accept that his oldest son had disappeared from the face of the earth. No one knew his destination when he left Cantwell Hall in secrecy, no one knew what might have happened.

One day, Edgar prayed in his chapel for guidance, and in his frail and increasingly confused state, he thought he heard the Lord whisper to him to reveal the family secret to his younger son, Richard, as he would need to be the bearer of the knowledge of the Vectis book. After chapel, he had the servants take him to the library. They sat him on a chair and he commanded them to climb the ladder to retrieve a wooden box hidden on the top shelf.

His manservant climbed up and passed some books to another pair of hands then announced he had found the box. He carried it over to his master and placed it on his lap.

The old man had not held the box in his hands for a long time. He was looking forward to spending a few moments with these papers, these old friends which bore so many memories-the Felix letter, which had made him spellbound as a young man, the enigmatic page with a date long in the future, the Calvin letter, which he treasured above all others for the memory of his esteemed friend, the Nostradamus letter for the memory of the man who had saved him from certain death.

He slowly opened the lid.

The box was empty.

Edgar gasped and was about to order the servant up the ladder again when he felt his chest explode with the pain of a thousand blows.

He was as good as dead when his withered body fell off the chair and hit the floor, and his servants could do nothing but frantically call for his children. His son, young Richard, was first on the scene, forever unaware that the secret of Vectis had just died with his father.