Brother Odd

The leaded window showed a black sky, and snow fairies danced down the glass. In the bottom panes, a few ferns of frost twinkled with a strange light, alternately red and blue.

The digital clock on the nightstand was where it had been when I’d fallen into bed, but the framed fortune-teller’s card appeared to have been moved. I felt certain it had been standing upright in front of the lamp. Now it lay flat.

I threw aside the bedclothes and got up. I walked out to the living room, turned on a lamp.

The straight-backed chair remained wedged under the knob of the door to the third-floor hallway. I tested it. Secure.

Before communism bled them of so much of their faith, the Russian people had a history of both Christian and Judaic mysticism. They weren’t known, however, for walking through locked doors or solid walls.

The living-room window was three stories above the ground and not approachable by a ledge. I checked the latch anyhow, and found it engaged.

Although lacking nuns on fire, lacking spiders with the heads of human babies, the night disturbance had been a dream. Nothing but a dream.

Looking down from the latch, I discovered the source of the pulsing light that throbbed in the filigree of frost along the edges of the glass. A thick blanket of snow had been drawn over the land while I slept, and three Ford Explorers, each with the word SHERIFF on its roof, stood idling on the driveway, clouds of exhaust pluming from their tailpipes, emergency beacons flashing.

Although still windless, the storm had not relented. Through the screening cold confetti, I glimpsed six widely separated flashlights wielded by unseen men moving in coordinated fashion, as if quartering the meadow in search of something.

CHAPTER 10 (#ulink_54671acb-fccd-5e26-99c1-cd5eebd1e4c4)

By the time I changed into thermal long johns, pulled on jeans and a crewneck sweater, got feet into ski boots, grabbed my Gore-Tex/Thermolite jacket, rushed downstairs, crossed the parlor, and pushed through the oak door into the guesthouse cloister, dawn had come.

Sullen light brushed a gray veneer over the limestone columns encircling the courtyard. Under the cloister ceiling, darkness held fast, as if the night were so unimpressed by the dreary morning that it might not retreat.

In the courtyard, without ski boots, St. Bartholomew stood in fresh powder, offering a winterized pumpkin in his outstretched hand.

On the east side of the cloister, directly across from the point at which I burst into it, was the guesthouse entrance to the abbatial church. Voices raised in prayer and a tolling bell echoed to me not from the church but instead along a passageway ahead and to my right.

Four steps led up to that barrel-vaulted stone corridor, which itself led twenty feet into the grand cloister. Here a courtyard four times larger than the first was framed by an even more impressive colonnade.

The forty-six brothers and five novices were gathered in this open courtyard in full habit, facing Abbot Bernard, who stood on the bell dais, with one hand rhythmically drawing upon the toll rope.

Matins had concluded, and near the end of Lauds, they had come out of the church for the final prayer and the abbot’s address.

The prayer was the Angelus, which is beautiful in Latin, when raised with many voices.

A chanted response rose from the brothers as I arrived: “Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.” Then abbot and all said, “Ave Maria.”

Two sheriff’s deputies waited in the shelter of the cloister as the brothers in the courtyard finished the prayer. The cops were big men and more solemn than the monks.

They stared at me. Clearly I was not a cop, and apparently I was not a monk. My indeterminate status made me a person of interest.

Their stares were so intense that I wouldn’t have been surprised if, in the bitter air, their eyes had begun to steam as did their every exhalation.

Having had much experience of police, I knew better than to approach them with the suggestion that their suspicions would best be directed at the glowering Russian, wherever he might coil at this moment. As a consequence, their interest in me would only intensify.

Although anxious to know the reason that the sheriff had been called, I resisted the urge to ask them. They would be inclined to view my ignorance as merely a pretense of ignorance, and they would regard me with greater suspicion than they did now.

Once a cop has found you of even passing interest, regarding a criminal matter, you can do nothing to remove yourself from his list of potential suspects. Only events beyond your control can clear you. Like being stabbed, shot, or strangled by the real villain.

“Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi,” said the brothers, and the abbot said, “Oremus,” which meant “Let us pray.”

Less than half a minute later, the Angelus concluded.

Usually, after the Angelus, the abbot’s address consists of a brief commentary on some sacred text and its application to monastic life. Then he does a soft-shoe number while singing “Tea for Two.”

All right, I made up the soft-shoe and “Tea for Two.” Abbot Bernard does resemble Fred Astaire, which is why I’ve never been able to get this irreverent image out of my head.

Instead of his usual address, the abbot announced a dispensation from attendance at morning Mass to all those who might be needed to assist the sheriff’s deputies in a thorough search of the buildings.

The time was 6:28. Mass would begin at seven o’clock.

Those essential to the conduct of Mass were to attend and, after the service, were to make themselves available to the authorities to answer questions and to assist as needed.

Mass would be over at about 7:50. Breakfast, which is taken in silence, always begins at eight o’clock.

The abbot also excused those assisting the police from Terce, the third of seven periods of daily prayer. Terce is at 8:40 and lasts for about fifteen minutes. The fourth period in the Divine Office is Sext, at eleven-thirty, before lunch.