The Rule of Sebastian

by Shelter Somerset

  The heavy scent of extinguished juniper incense lingered over Sebastian’s head, a reminder of whose authority controlled the workings of the abbey. Sebastian agreed with a few of Casey’s suspicions. Revenge lurked behind the abbot’s decision. Vengeance for his snooping and for Sebastian’s snatching Casey from his clutches.

  “I just don’t understand,” Sebastian mumbled.

  The abbot’s eyes dropped to the top of his polished desk. “I planned on calling you to my office before Retire today, in fact, Brother Sebastian, to elaborate on something we’ve already discussed. You might find it relates to your present torment.”

  Lifting his eyes, Sebastian said, “And what is that?”

  Father Paolo cupped his hands under his chin and eyed Sebastian with tightened lips. “I’m going to assemble the brothers tomorrow and instruct that we forever conceal Brother JC’s death. It’s what the Lord would want.”

  Sebastian’s head snapped up, and he peered at the abbot. “How could the Lord wish to cover up the death of an innocent man?”

  “How do you know he’s innocent? Have you learned why he came here?”

  “No, but….”

  “I’ve seen his type. He asked for trouble here.”

  “You once insisted he came to us because he was a devout Catholic. You even compared him with the old women of Vila de Seda who hiked to church on their knees.”

  “Are you defying me again?”

  Sebastian’s shoulders slumped, and he gazed toward his fidgety hands. “I just don’t see how any of us can pretend that a man wasn’t murdered, inside an abbey of all places.”

  “That’s my point precisely.” The father stood and began pacing. “There are larger issues at stake beyond that boy’s death. We’ve gone over this, haven’t we?”

  Sebastian followed him with his eyes. “But you’re asking us to participate in a cover-up, to lie.”

  “We’ll go on here as if he’d never come,” the abbot said as if to himself, pivoting on his heels faster and faster. “No one will be the wiser. We’ll toss his body into the forest. We must act within the next few days. Already the snows are coming farther and farther apart.”

  “What about when they find him? What about the contusion on his temple?”

  “They’ll think he hit his head on a tree or a rock buried in the snow.”

  “They’ll do an autopsy. They’ll learn he died from asphyxiation.”

  Father Paolo’s accent became garbled. “He suffocated in the snow,” he said. “Many victims do in Colorado. Ever heard of avalanches? Rescuers find people who’ve died from suffocation in isolated mountain passes all the time. His being frozen all this time will only fortify their assumptions. The authorities will never draw a link between the abbey and him, between any of us and him.”

  “I… I can’t do it.”

  Father Paolo stopped before Sebastian and looked down on him with flaming cheeks. “You must. You have no choice in the matter.” He seemed to study Sebastian, pondering. Then he sat back at his desk and said in a calmer tone, “There is something I might do for you in return for your strict obedience.”

  Sebastian flashed him a look. “Does it have anything to do with you wanting to speak with me?”

  Gazing toward the cold fireplace, Father Paolo said, “I can perhaps—perhaps, mind you—see that Casey stays put here with us at Mt. Ouray.”

  Acid inched up Sebastian’s throat. “Are you… are you bribing me… with Casey?”

  Father Paolo smirked and shook his head at Sebastian. “I’m merely stating a reasonable condition. Now’s your chance to act the same. Isn’t Brother Casey worth it to you? For you to forget any of this ugliness with JC ever happened and to keep your mouth shut?”

  “So all along you set it up for Casey to be sent away in order to trick me?”

  “I’m hardly that devious, Brother Sebastian. The bishop did, in fact, solicit me for a younger monk. It was one of those opportunistic nuggets to fall into my lap. I cleverly used it to my advantage. Can you blame me?”

  Dazed, Sebastian stared at the abbot, but hardly saw him.

  “I can always suggest that the bishop look for a monk elsewhere. As you’ve stated, we hardly have any brothers to spare here at Mt. Ouray, which is what I’d like to tell him. But that is up to you.”

  The father spread his arms, his flowing tunic sleeves long and impressive. Beneath the picture of Pope Benedict, he almost appeared like a pageant angel, which made his scheme all the more unreal.

  “This is Mt. Ouray,” he said. “My abbey. A place I intend to salvage in any way possible. Have I made myself clear, Brother Sebastian?”

  Sebastian worked up the spit in his mouth. “Yes, Father Paolo, you’ve made yourself clear.”

  SEBASTIAN retired to his cell and refused to come out for his afternoon work assignment. He and Brother Eusebius had met the winter’s rosary quota days before, and the abbot had relegated him to odd jobs around the abbey. The latest: to fix the display cases in the gift shop. In a sense, Sebastian hadn’t fibbed to Brother Eusebius when he’d mumbled through his cell door that he’d fallen ill. He was sick. Sick of the ultimatum Father Paolo had forced him to face.

  He rejected dinner and came out only for Vespers. The brothers’ ogling bothered him not a bit. He made scarce effort to conceal his shaken gaze and his inaudible, listless chanting. Father Paolo avoided his eyes whenever he emerged from his cell. A smugness cut into the abbot’s face.

  Casey knocked on his cell during their evening free period. Sebastian asked only that he allow him time alone. “Whatever you need,” Casey said into the door with a soft voice, and Sebastian heard the gentle slap of his sandals fade along the corridor until the sound disappeared from earshot.

  Later that night, after Compline, Casey’s sober flute playing drifted into his cell with the softness of spring’s fragrant promises. Warmer weather did indeed lie around the corner, and Sebastian had only a few days to choose which oath to declare. Father Paolo’s or his own.

  Keep Casey and discard the truth or lose him forever in exchange for justice.

  None of it seemed fair.

  But when had life ever played fair for him?

  Blue wedges of moonlight rubbed against the wall. One highlighted his statuette of the Virgin Mary. He begged her for compassion and mercy. Did she care? Had she ever even existed?

  Casey’s tender tunes, the same familiar melody that Sebastian had failed to place, pained his heart. Images of tragic lovers whirled in his mind. He reached under the bedcovers, touched himself through his tunic. He imagined Casey in the shower stall, lathering the soap over his sleek body, devoid of almost any body fat or hair. He rubbed himself while the music interlaced with his thoughts. A voice from somewhere flowed with the melody. Sebastian had whispered Casey’s name, dripped from his lips like nectar from honeysuckle.

  “Casey….”

  Growing exasperated, he tossed the covers aside and sat on the edge of the bed, his bare feet flat on the cold floor. His heart raced. He dropped his head into his hands and bit his palms. He pulled them away, a string of saliva connecting his lower lip and the cleft of his joined palms.

  He stared at his large hands, sparkling with saliva under the moonbeams.

  God, prevent me from doing what I want to do.

  He stood, gazed hard at the floor, and uncinched his belt.

  Chapter Twenty

  A SOLITARY tear left a cold trail along Casey’s cheek while he played the flute. The moonlight that streamed through his bedroom window bathed him in a bluish-yellow light. Like a friend boarding a plane to fly far away, so, too, his music drifted absent of his touch, despite it coming from his own lips and fingers.

  Whenever Casey had crossed paths with Sebastian during the day, he’d studied him. His demeanor had changed. He understood that Sebastian had been unsuccessful in convincing the abbot to allow him to remain at Mt. Ouray. That’s why Sebastian had evaded him during the day. Defeat and guilt fueled Sebastia
n’s torment. There was no keeping Father Paolo from his intentions. Dual emotions conflicted Casey. On one level, his leaving loomed as imminent. Yet on the other, Sebastian loved him enough to suffer over it.

  Casey wondered what St. Simeon Stylites would do. Climb a pole and forget the world? Sometimes that’s exactly what Casey wanted. Without Sebastian, no reason existed why he shouldn’t torture himself as his favorites saints had done. He’d scale the tallest tree in the San Juan Range and refuse to budge. His stubbornness, like that of St. Simeon, would be taken for piety—or maybe insanity. Either way, Casey no longer cared.

  Dispirited, he laid his flute aside, forcing himself back to a time when his loneliness was something for him alone. Upstairs in his bedroom in Hutchinson, surrounded by an indifferent family, he’d find solace in isolation while reading Milne or playing his flute or writing stories (as a boy he’d sometimes write plays on the lives of make-believe saints). The pleasure of self-imprisonment in a house full of strangers. But here? In Mt. Ouray? With Sebastian so near?

  You will find love and beauty inside a monastery. Had the whispering voice inside his head meant to persuade him or to stress a warning?

  He fell supine into bed. The dark ceiling gaped at him. He wrapped his arms around himself, massaging his elbows underneath his tunic sleeves. He felt cold, yet it was warm inside, with the dry heater boards pumping harder than usual.

  What else was there? The pain stood more tangible than the San Juan Mountains puncturing the unrestrained Colorado sky.

  Moonlight continued to cut between the window blinds, leaving slashes across the floor. The Earth had shifted. Warmer days lurked restlessly. Normally, spring would fill him with hope and excitement, inject his limbs with vim. But now, he realized, with the thaw he’d be shipped like a package to a Trappist monastery he’d only given the slightest inkling of joining when he’d first considered his discernment, two thousand miles from Mt. Ouray.

  Irritating tears dribbled down the sides of Casey’s face and tickled the back of his ears and neck. He wiped his face, sniffled. What remained for him to do?

  In one continuous, bold move, he leaped from bed, tore the belt from his waist, and pulled off his tunic and boxer briefs. He stood exposed, almost shocked at his own bare rebelliousness. He trembled with a quivering smile that flexed his tear-stiffened cheeks.

  Naked, a sense of liberty overcame him.

  Temptation trembled through his limbs. Sheathed with nothing but his own skin, he crawled under the bedcovers and clutched the edges. How nice to feel the sleekness of sheets against his tender flesh.

  He lay motionless for several minutes. Barely a breath swept past his dry lips. For the moment, his defiance proved his sole comfort.

  He jerked upward. Someone—or something—lurked outside his cell. Second night he’d heard the sound. He clutched the covers tighter. This time he sensed heavy breathing directly opposite the door. The doorknob jiggled. He tensed. Why couldn’t he scream?

  The cell door opened. Meager light parted the darkness, silhouetting a tall figure. No one spoke. Casey brought the covers closer to his nose. He wanted to shout out, but his tongue stuck to the roof of his dry mouth.

  The form moved inside his cell. He sensed heat pulsating from it.

  Was it the murderer? The same shadow that had chased him into the sacristy? A demon summoned by the Dalakises?

  JC’s ghost come back for revenge?

  But ghosts did not exist.

  A gasp escaped Casey’s mouth, about the same time the figure moved closer, and Casey was certain it had spotted him. He shook with fear. Nevertheless, an odd sense of anticipation tingled along his bare limbs.

  The slim mattress sank, as if the form had sat on the edge of the bed, forcing Casey to flinch. He felt hot breath on his knuckles that was not his own.

  “I sometimes wish we’d met under different circumstances, in a different place.”

  The voice. The one he’d heard telling him to seek the monastic life years ago. God’s voice? Then he recognized the shadow’s earthy scent.

  Casey shook his head to reorient himself, and he sat upright, holding the covers to his neck to conceal his nakedness. “Sebastian?”

  “Did I startle you?”

  “Only for a moment. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so weary.”

  “I’ve noticed. You’re not feeling better?”

  “A little. And how are you?”

  “I’m okay.” Casey scanned Sebastian more closely and discerned in the moonlight that he went without sandals. “What brings you here at this hour?”

  Sebastian’s silent gaze appeared brooding in the murkiness. “I spoke with the abbot,” he whispered.

  “The news isn’t good. I’ve already guessed.”

  Another pause. Sebastian inhaled. “He’s given me a horrible choice, one I’m certain he’ll present to you too. To all of us. Tomorrow he’s going to call an assembly and announce his mandate.”

  “JC?”

  Casey sensed Sebastian nodding, and he buried his head in his pillow. The bland smell of nothingness from the cotton pillowcase burned his nostrils. “No,” he said, roving his forehead over the pillow to wipe out the awful thoughts.

  “Try not to let it upset you,” Sebastian said.

  Casey felt the mattress rise, and he heard the door shut, and for a moment he worried Sebastian had left him, providing him with nothing more than words for consolation. He expected to hear the slap of his bare feet die away behind the closed door. Instead he felt the mattress compress again and a hand rest on his shoulder. Heat traveled through the bedcovers and constricted his throat in relief.

  “Casey, after all we’ve suffered through together in a few short months, we can face this tribulation.”

  Indignation stiffened his limbs, and he rolled to face Sebastian, careful to ensure the bedcovers did not slip from his grip. Sebastian’s shadowy figure, a blur through his moistened eyelashes, fluctuated with a throbbing force of the moon. “I’ll be carted away from here,” he said in a raspy whisper. “Less than a month from now we’ll never see each other again. It’s because I won’t let you lie on the abbot’s behalf. I won’t let you.”

  “Don’t worry yourself, Casey,” Sebastian said soothingly. “Let’s face this like brave soldiers. Take courage.”

  “I can’t take courage.” Casey wanted to tear away from Sebastian’s hold and again cover his teary face with the pillow, suffocating the pain until it expired, but Sebastian held him in place.

  “We have no choice,” he said. “This is what God has dropped into our laps. We must deal with it. You and I. I know we can.”

  Sebastian’s lulling voice softened his anger into prickly warmth. There was quiet. Sebastian’s hands held firm to his arms beneath the bedcovers. The chill had left him. Casey wanted to smile. But the mere idea of the abbot’s pronouncement seared into his soul anew.

  “I can’t believe Father Paolo, of all people, would consider such a horrible thing.”

  “It’s how things are done sometimes. I used to see it often in the police department. Cover-ups, political pandering, bribery. All of it. It’s the way the world wags.”

  “But you’re not going to do it.”

  “I’ve made up my mind.”

  “I’m flattered, really, but you can’t. Let me leave here. Let it all be over with.” He swallowed a sob, wanting to appear braver for Sebastian’s sake.

  “What would life be like here without you, Casey? Without my secondary?”

  They looked at each other in the subtle light of the moon. Sebastian lowered his eyes to the bluish slash marks on the floor. Casey, following his somber gaze, nearly gasped aloud and choked back his instinct to bury his head. The moonlight revealed Casey’s garments and underwear, which he’d stripped from his body and tossed to the floor.

  With heavy, almost hostile breathing, Sebastian’s eyes fixed on the heap of bodiless clothes. Casey’s heart thumped in his
ears, and his neck and cheeks burned.

  Gulping, Sebastian uttered, “You’re… you’re not wearing your tunic.”

  “It was only this first time,” Casey said. “I was warm. I meant to put it back on before I fell asleep.”

  The mattress lifted. Sebastian moved for the door, stopped, turned back for the bed. It was the first time that Casey noticed Sebastian did not wear a belt with his tunic. Casey held the covers higher to his chin. In an instant, Sebastian reached for them, and, dreamlike, Casey relinquished his hold. Using the most precise movements, Sebastian lowered the covers.

  Sebastian stood straight and stared at Casey’s exposed body, highlighted by the moonlight. Letting his eyes fall away, Sebastian sat beside him again and buried his head in his hands.

  Against his better judgment, Casey flung his arms around him, unconcerned for his exposed flesh, which burned against the itchy fabric of Sebastian’s tunic. Tears flowed. Sebastian grabbed him in return, squeezed him tighter.

  Casey’s heart drummed against his chest. He pursed his lips, tried to will away the sense of light-headedness that left him trembling.

  Sebastian nudged him back and stood before him, speechless, solidified with a piercing resolve. With a slow, thoughtful turn of his hands, Sebastian flipped his tunic over his head and let it drop by his feet beside Casey’s.

  Sebastian Harkin, his flesh a sheet of smoldering strength, stood naked before Casey’s eyes. Within a mere arm’s reach. Sebastian stepped closer, never once removing his eyes from Casey.

  The afternoon they’d exposed themselves to each other in the showers, Casey had seen Sebastian only semiaroused. Now, something like spit or lubricant glistened on his shockingly long and thick full erection.

  Casey reached out, and Sebastian grasped his hand. No words. More staring. Slowly, Sebastian’s grip tightened. Casey winced, but he didn’t want him to let go. Sebastian softened his hold and crawled on top of him, his hardness like a sword pressing into Casey’s abdomen.