Library of the Dead

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.