Fraternity of the Stone

by David Morrell

  He glanced toward the mouse on the floor.

  And frowned. The mouse lay on its side, unmoving.

  Drew stared in surprise, not moving either. His chest tensed. Shocked, he held his breath, then blinked and, inhaling slowly, bent down to touch Stuart's side.

  It remained inert.

  Drew gently nudged it, feeling the soft sleek fur, but got no response. His throat seemed lined with sand. As he swallowed painfully, he picked Stuart up. The mouse lay still in his palm. It weighed almost nothing, but the weight was dead.

  Drew's stomach felt cold. In dismay, he shook his head, baffled. A minute ago, the mouse had practically been dancing for its supper.

  Was it old age, he wondered. A heart attack or a stroke? He didn't know much about mice, but he vaguely recalled having read somewhere that they didn't live long. A year or two.

  But that was in the wild, exposed to predators, diseases, and cold. What about here in the cell? He strained to think, telling himself that even with warmth and good care, Stuart Little had been bound to die. There wasn't any way to know how old it had been when it showed up last autumn, but in human terms, by now it might have been ninety.

  I shouldn't be surprised. By feeding it, I merely postponed... If it hadn't died today...

  Tomorrow.

  He bit his lip, grieving as he set the small corpse back on the floor. And felt guilty because he grieved. A Carthusian was supposed to shut out all worldly distractions. God alone mattered. The mouse had been a temptation that he should have resisted. Now God was punishing him, teaching him why he shouldn't become infatuated with transitory creatures.

  Death.

  Drew shuddered. No. I wouldn't change anything.

  The mouse was fun to have around. I'm glad I took care of it.

  His eyes stung, making him blink repeatedly as he stared down at his lifeless friend. Terrible thoughts occurred to him. What should he do with the body? For sure, he wasn't going to have a custodian brother dispose of it, perhaps even dump it in the trash. The mouse deserved better. The dignity of burial.

  But where? Through misted vision, he glanced toward his workroom window. Sunset had turned to dusk, casting his garden wall into shadow.

  A cedar bush grew in a corner of the wall. Yes, Drew thought. He'd bury Stuart Little beneath the shrub. An evergreen, it lived all year. Even in winter, it's color would be a reminder.

  His throat felt swollen, aching each time he swallowed. Thirsty, he reached for his cup of water, raised it toward his lips, glanced past it toward the thick slab of bread in his bowl.

  And paused.

  His spine began to tingle.

  He peered down at the bread on the floor, the chunk he'd thrown to Stuart Little. He stared at the water in the cup he held. And slowly, cautiously, making sure that no liquid spilled over the top, he eased the container back down on the table. Reflexively he wiped his hands on the front of his robe.

  No, he thought. It couldn't be.

  But what if you're not imagining?

  His suspicion filled him with shame. In his sixth stern year of penance, did he still retain the habit of thinking as he had in his former life? Had his training been that effective? Were his instincts that resistant to change?

  But just supposing. You know, for the sake of argument. What kind might it be? Did it kill on contact?

  Tensing, he stared at his hands. No, he'd touched the mouse. And the bread. Just a minute ago. But the mouse had died quickly. In the time Drew had taken to close his eyes and say grace. If it's poison and it kills on contact, even with my greater size, I ought to be dead now, too.

  He breathed.

  All right, then, it has to be ingested.

  (You've got to stop thinking this way.)

  And it's powerful. Almost instantaneous.

  Assuming it's poison.

  Of course, just assuming. After all, it's still quite possible that Stuart Little died from natural causes.

  (But what would you have thought six years ago?)

  He struggled to repress his terrible memories. No. God's testing me again. He's using this death to learn if I've truly purged myself. A man of detachment would never think like this.

  (But in the old days...

  Yes?

  You thought this way all the time.)

  He narrowed his vision till all he saw was the unmoving mouse on the floor. Slowly, frowning so hard he felt the beginnings of a headache, he raised his eyes toward the serving hatch beside his door.

  The hatch was closed. But beyond it was a corridor.

  (No. It makes no sense. Not here, not now! Who? Why?)

  Besides, he was merely guessing. The only way to know for sure if the bread had been poisoned was to...

  Taste it? Hardly.

  Have it tested? That would take too long.

  But there was another way. He could investigate the monastery. He stiffened with doubt. The notion repelled him.

  But under the circumstances...

  He stared at the door. In the six years he'd been here, he'd left his quarters seldom, only to convene with the other monks for mandatory communal rituals. Those ventures outside had been keenly disturbing to him, nerve-racking intrusions on his peace of mind.

  But under the circumstances...

  He wiped his sweaty lip. His years of disciplined regimen told him to wait a short while longer until he normally left for vespers. Yes. The decision calmed him. Avoiding extremes, it appealed to his common sense.

  Dusk deepened, shifting to dark. A misty drizzle beaded on his window. He shivered, grieving, too preoccupied to force himself to turn on a light.

  The vespers bell stayed silent, but in rhythm with his daily cycle, he knew that it should have struck by now. He told himself that the mouse's death had disturbed his judgment. Time was passing with exaggerated slowness, that was all. He didn't have a clock in the cell, so how could he be sure when vespers was supposed to occur?

  He counted to one hundred. Waited. Started to count again. And stopped.

  With a painful sigh, he repressed his inhibitions, broke six years of habit, and opened the door.

  18

  A light glowed overhead. The hallway was bare, no paintings, no carpeting. Soundless, deserted.

  That wasn't unusual. True, when the bell tolled, he on occasion met other monks leaving their cells to go to the chapel. But equally often, he went earlier or later than the others and walked alone down the corridor.

  He did so now. Still determined to obey the ritual, he reached the end, turned left, and passed beneath another light to enter the lodge. In shadow, the chapel door was fifty paces ahead of him, to the right.

  His misgivings increased, his instincts alarming him. Instead of continuing toward the chapel, he made an abrupt decision and turned sharply right, descending the stairs to the monastery's refectory. As he expected, at this time of night (and except on Sunday) it wasn't occupied. But thinking of the bread he'd been given, he stared toward a light in the rear where the kitchen was.

  Passing empty tables with barren tops, he took a deep breath, pushed through the swinging door, and studied the massive stove, the vaultlike door to the freezer, the extensive counters and cupboards. And the two dead men on the floor.

  Though custodian brothers, not hermits, they nonetheless wore the white gown, scapular, and hood of the true Carthusian. The chest of each gown was stained with blood, each hood stained red at the temple.

  Drew surprised himself. Perhaps because he'd unconsciously expected something like this, or because his instincts had not been as neutralized as he'd hoped, his heart stayed perfectly calm.

  But his stomach felt scorched.

  The shots would have been silenced to keep the monastery from being alerted, he thought. Two assassins at least. Each brother had fallen in roughly the same position, suggesting that they'd been caught by surprise. No sign of panic, of either brother trying to escape, which meant that they'd been shot in the chest simultaneously. Drew nodded.
Yes, two assassins at least.

  And experienced. A wound in the chest was sometimes not fatal. The protocol required a follow-up - just to be sure. And to minimize suffering. The required coup de grace. A shot to each temple. Professional. Indeed.

  Drew controlled the pressure swelling in him, turned, and left the kitchen. Outside the refectory, he nodded in anguish, knowing what he had to do now, what he'd considered doing when he left his room. But he'd put it off as long as possible, until he had no other choice. It would be the absolute violation of the Carthusian rule. As severe as leaving his room at any other time except for the required rituals.

  The thought was repulsive to him. But it had to be acted upon.

  Going up the stairs, he went back the way he'd come.

  He reached the end of the corridor in the lodge and angled right to enter his wing of cells. There he paused at the first door he came to. Studied the knob.

  And opened the door. An overhead light glowed in the workroom. The monk who occupied it must have switched it on as sunset deepened. The man lay sprawled on the floor. The chair before his workbench was overturned. A wedge of bread was clutched in his hand. A pool of urine spread from his gown.

  Drew hardened his jaw and shut the door. Repressing the bile that rose to his mouth, he went down to the next door and opened it. In this case the workroom light had not been turned on. But the light from the hallway was sufficient for Drew to see the monk slumped across his table, the bowl of bread pinned beneath one arm.

  He went on like that, opening and closing each door, proceeding to the next one, and the next. A light was sometimes on and sometimes not. The body was sometimes on the table, sometimes on the floor. Sometimes the monk in dying had brushed against his cup of water, spilling it, so that water and urine were indistinguishable.

  All of them - the nineteen other monks who'd secluded themselves in this refuge - had been poisoned by the bread. Or by the water, Drew thought. It was logical that the water had been poisoned as well. No sense in not being thorough. Professional.

  Too many questions intruded. But the foremost of all was why.

  He now understood his motive when, as dusk had thickened, he hadn't turned on his light. He'd assumed that his grief over Stuart Little had robbed him of even the resolve to cross his workroom and flick on the light switch. But now he knew better, his subconscious having warned him. Whoever had poisoned the food would have posted someone outside, probably in the courtyard, to watch the monastery for signs of life. A light that came on when it shouldn't have would have drawn the assassins to his cell.

  More questions. Why use poison? Why not shoot each monk as the kitchen staff had been shot? Why wait this long to come in and verify the kill?

  Why kill everyone? And where was the death team?

  With each door that he opened, with each corpse that he found, he increasingly reverted to his former state of mind. Six years ago, on the run from Scalpel, he'd have naturally assumed that he was the target. But he'd been careful. Scalpel didn't know he'd entered the monastery. Scalpel thought he was dead.

  Then who else could be hunting him? Possibly he wasn't the target at all. Maybe one of the other monks had been the target. But why? No, it wasn't likely. And why had every monk been killed? The tactic didn't make sense.

  In a moment it did, however, and the back of his neck felt cold. The death team couldn't have known which cell was whose. The monks were all anonymous, the doors unmarked. There wasn't any way to determine who secluded himself in which unit. The team couldn't very well have checked each room - so complicated an operation would have been too risky, leaving too many chances for mistakes. It was one thing to confront the kitchen staff on the lower level where no one was likely to hear a commotion. That risk was acceptable. But on the main floor where the monks lived close together - that was quite another matter. Entering each cell, even with silencers to muffle the shots, the team would still have been concerned about an unpredictable scream from a startled monk, a shout that might have alerted the other monks and - if I'm right, Drew thought - one monk in particular, the man the team had come for.

  Me.

  His forehead knotted in torment. Because of my sins? Is that why everybody had to die? Dear God, what have I done by coming here?

  The logic of using poison was clear to him now. A way of taking out the entire monastery (with the exception of the already executed kitchen staff) at once.

  Equally important, it was death from a distance. By remote control.

  Because the team respected the skills of the man they'd come to assassinate, because they didn't know if six years of seclusion had been enough to blunt his talents, they'd chosen not to come at him directly. An added precaution. To make extra sure.

  But everyone else had to die.

  Drew's throat made a terrible choking sound.

  He suddenly realized that wherever the assassins were hiding, they'd soon come out. When sufficient time had passed for them to feel confident, they'd inspect the monastery. They'd search each cell. They'd want to verify the kill, to guarantee that one man in particular had been killed.

  His shoulders tensed as he glanced in both directions along the corridor.

  The vespers bell began to toll.

  19

  It sounded unnatural in the otherwise deathly silence, echoing down the hallway, through the courtyard. Mournful, as if announcing a funeral.

  His sinews compacted. He crouched, strong habits insisting, making him understand how a moth must feel when attracted to a flame. Every day for the past six years, that bell had beckoned him, so much a part of his daily schedule that even now as he recognized the threat, he still felt compelled to obey its call. As would any surviving monk who by virtue of extra discipline had decided to refuse even the minimum meal of bread and water. Drawn to the chapel for vespers, the monk would open the door.

  And be shot by a silenced handgun that accomplished what the poisoned food had failed to do. No witnesses, no interruptions, refinement upon refinement.

  It made Drew quiver with rage.

  But this was obvious. When the bell had rung sufficiently, when the team was satisfied that no fasting monk could have possibly refused its call, the search would begin. He had to hide.

  But where? He couldn't risk leaving the monastery. He had to assume that its perimeter was being watched. All right then, he had to stay inside.

  Again the question, where? When the team didn't find his body, they'd check every room and cranny in the cloister. Even if he hadn't been the specific target, their intention had clearly been to kill everyone. He had to assume that they wouldn't be satisfied until they accounted for every corpse. True, he had the advantage of knowing the layout better than they did. Even so, they'd be methodical, determined. The odds were against him.

  Unless. Desperation primed his thoughts. If he could manage to convince them that...

  Each stroke of the bell seemed louder, stronger. He hurried to return to his cell. From custom, he'd closed its door as he left his workroom to go to vespers. But that had been a mistake, he concluded, and now left the door open after stepping back inside. The dead mouse beside the chunk of bread on the floor would show the team that he'd learned about the poison. The absence of his body, the significance of his door - and only his door - being open, would make the team think he'd fled. They'd focus their search in other parts of the monastery, more likely outside, alerting the guards on the perimeter that he was trying to get through the woods. They'd feel urgent, impatient.

  He hoped. Rushing soundlessly up his dark stairs, he reached his oratory, and for once in six years, he didn't stop to pray. He darted through it to the blackness of his study, and then to his sleeping quarters, where he veered toward the small, murky bathroom.

  In the ceiling above the sink, a trapdoor led to the insulation beneath the roof. He removed his shoes so he wouldn't leave marks on the porcelain and, holding them, climbed upon the sink, hearing it creak beneath his weight. He groped abo
ve him, exhaled when he felt the rim of the trapdoor, pushed it up, and lifted himself into the musty, cold, yet sweat-producing closeness. After sliding the trapdoor back into place, he crawled across the irritating glass wool insulation toward a far corner, where he lay as flat as he could, hiding behind joists and upright support beams. He tried to keep his mind still but couldn't.

  Breathing dust, he brooded. About his fellow monks.

  And Stuart Little.

  20

  The bell stopped tolling, its muteness eerie. He went rigid, straining to listen, knowing that his hunters would be leaving the chapel now. The drizzle that had earlier beaded on his window increased to a steady rain that drummed on the slanted roof above him. Shivering from the chill and the damp, he pressed himself harder against the insulation. Despite its bulk, he felt the sharp-edged two-by-sixes that formed the skeleton of the floor beneath him. He waited.