The Monk

by Hallahan, William H. ;

  He bought her a lovely pin. “For my business counselor,” he said. “No strings, Annie. Just a way of saying thank you.”

  “Say thank you.”

  He frowned. “Thank you.”

  “Good. Now you said it. You don’t need to give me a pin.” And she made him take it back.

  He grew quiet. Then he took her hand. “Anne. You told me Brendan’s not coming back. True?”

  “I’m afraid so, Trevor.”

  “Then, follow my logic, if there’s ever going to be a man in your life, it won’t be Brendan. Right?”

  “I’m afraid that’s so also, Trevor. But—”

  “Shhh! Let me give my advisor some advice. Get on with your life. Brendan’s in your past.”

  “And you’re my future.”

  “I would marry you right now.”

  “Oh, Trevor. We’d end up in a divorce in two weeks.”

  “Good. Wonderful. I mean I’d take fourteen days of marriage with you if that’s all I could get.”

  She looked at him with awe. It was as though he were reading her script with Brendan. “I’d take two weeks of living with you, Brendan,” she’d said. She took Trevor’s hand in both of hers. She knew exactly how he felt. He loved her and couldn’t have her; she loved Brendan and couldn’t have him. Right now, tonight, she’d eagerly, joyfully take fourteen days with Brendan.

  He smiled at her. “I need you. Brendan doesn’t. And I’d make you a wonderful husband. I adore you, Anne.”

  “Enough, Trevor, enough.”

  “Do you know what I’d do if you put your arms around me and said ‘I love you, Trevor’? My heart would burst with joy.”

  Trevor took Anne to meet his mother. She lived in Marblehead, the gold coast above Boston. They got a glimpse of it when the plane circled for a landing at the Boston airport. A chauffeured limousine was waiting for them.

  Marblehead is a promontory, an enclave of the very wealthy, overlooking bay, harbor and ocean. The house was very large and done in the Spanish style of the 1920’s. Jay Gatsby could easily have come out with a pair of binoculars to study Daisy’s dock.

  Mrs. Townsend was a presence. Her husband’s family had more money than hers, but her antecedents were far more impressive, and the mansion rehearsed it at every turning. There were valuable American antiques that had been in her family for many generations; there were portraits from the eighteenth century of soldiers and bankers and preachers. There were framed deeds to property in Beacon Hill and brown parchment maps, coats of arms, charters and military commissions and photographs. And, of course, family trees.

  She was obviously determined to like Anne as she took her for a stroll through the mansion. Trevor sat out on the patio with a cup of tea and watched the sea.

  “You’re very pretty, Anne,” Mrs. Townsend said. “Very sweet. I can see why Trevor adores you. I can see it all over his face. You’re the first girl he ever brought home.” She brushed a wisp of Anne’s hair back and studied her with measuring eyes.

  Anne thought, There’s a wedding gown from eight generations back and she’s wondering if she should suggest I wear it. The wedding: Anne shrank for thinking about it. This mansion filled with Bostonians of impeccable antecedents come to see the heir to a great New England fortune marry a little Irish Catholic girl from New York. It was too trite: the plot from a thousand novels.

  Now came the confrontation. Mrs. Townsend turned to face Anne. “You may know I have absolutely no influence over my son. Underneath that pleasant exterior of his is bedrock. He gets it from my side of the family. Trevor does exactly as Trevor wishes. And I choose to maintain a relationship with him by not fighting with him. Long ago we divided the United States between us. I get all of New England to Connecticut’s southwest border and he gets all of New York down through Virginia.” She fixed a sharp eye on Anne. “That’s not so bad. He gets that wonderfully renascent Philadelphia society, plus Baltimore and all of the carpetbaggers of Washington. The rest of the country we left to recent immigrants.”

  And abruptly the two women stood laughing. The sense of humor, the same wit—now Anne saw where Trevor got it. Mrs. Townsend led the way down a long second-floor corridor.

  “This was the nursery. All three of my boys were raised here.” It was a huge room with bright white walls, life-sized stuffed clowns, hobbyhorses, toys and toy boxes, and childsized furniture. In the middle of the room was an antique rocking horse, the leather saddle cracked with age.

  Mrs. Townsend pushed it with a finger and watched it quietly rock back and forth. “Imported from England for my great-great-great-great grandfather. Belongs in a museum.”

  They walked over to the window and looked out over the ocean. “How many children do you want, Anne?”

  “Oh, a few—two, three.”

  Mrs. Townsend nodded. “I’m not very crazy about the Irish, Anne. They have too many flaws and practically no virtues. Up here they treat life as if it were a football game between Notre Dame and Oxford. If I had my choice Trevor would marry into one of the old Boston families. Fortunately the other two have both married fortunes. So I have no complaints. But—well, let’s get to it, Annie. How are the children going to be raised? Pape or Anglican?”

  Anne gave Mrs. Townsend a half smile. “My father would describe you as one tough cookie, Mrs. Townsend.”

  She lifted her head and chuckled. “I bet he describes you that way too, doesn’t he, Anne? Well, Trevor needs a tough cookie for a wife. He’s very wishy-washy about most things. Come-day, go-day. He should be worrying about what church his children will go to, not me. But the thought, I can assure, you, has never crossed his mind.” She turned that penetrating look to Anne again. “But it has crossed yours.”

  Anne nodded. “Maybe it’s not as important as it used to be.”

  “Maybe. I must say I’m surprised. You’re not what I expected at all. You look like you have a lot of common sense, Anne. We may end up hating each other. I’m sure I’m going to turn into a horrible mother-in-law. But I’m going to watch and wait. You want to talk about the wedding?”

  There was a wedding dress and she was going to be invited to wear it. Mrs. Townsend watched Anne’s face. “No answer. Okay. We won’t talk about the wedding. Let’s go have a cup of tea and we can both beard the affable idiot.”

  And they both stood laughing together.

  To Mrs. Townsend it was an accepted fact that her son would marry Anne.

  On the flight back from Marblehead, Trevor looked down at the turbulent Atlantic Ocean and said, “Spring has already arrived in Bermuda, Annie. How’d you like to sail there on the Hirondelle with me?”

  Bermuda. She too looked down at the grim and gray Atlantic. Late March in New York was just as grim and gray, a place where winter always dies badly amid dirty slush and gutter trash, where everything is begrimed with a white salt film and everyone has that end-of-winter dowdiness. Spring in Bermuda.

  “Why not go meet it?” Trevor said. “We get two springs that way. One on the island and another in New York when we come back.”

  He put a slight emphasis on “we.” And she understood it was a proposal. Marriage to Trevor.

  Anne looked down again at the gray water. She couldn’t find a reason to say no.

  “Can I sleep on it, Trevor?”

  “You’ll give me an answer tomorrow?”

  “Yes. Tomorrow night.”

  He wanted her to say Yes and he wanted her to say it then. He bowed his head like a communicant praying. “We could leave tomorrow morning,” he offered.

  “I’ll answer you. Tomorrow night,” she said. “Seven o’clock.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Brendan and Timothy

  Spring defeated winter by drowning it. The warm southerly air combined with the torrential rains to melt the snow and thaw the earth. The world was a vast lake of rain and meltwater.

  Brendan located the road up to the ruined monastery at one in the morning and with the aid of a hiker’s pole bega
n the slow ascent. Behind him streams had overflowed their banks, and cities and towns were flooded. Up ahead of him, the mountain was gushing water from every crevice. A gurgling river was running down the road, sweeping stones, gravel and debris with it. He was surprised when his flashlight picked up occasional patches of snow lying in the naked woods, still unmelted. His feet were wet inside his boots. His legs were soaked to the knees.

  The night before, the freight train had carried him miles south before it slowed in a switching yard. The old derelict who had pulled him on board the freight car showed him how to jump off while the train was still moving. By then it was nearly dawn.

  At a nearby siding he found another empty freight car and there he’d slept most of the day away. The rain was still pouring down late in the afternoon; part of the switching yard was underwater. Long before dark, Brendan was on the road again, moving toward the mountain and the ruined monastery.

  Now he wondered how he would find the place in this blinding rain and darkness. One aspect to his situation cheered him: The hawk could probably not fly in this weather. So he used the flashlight freely.

  The old road climbed, then relented, only to climb again. He was unable to see more than a few feet ahead but he knew he was following a switchback road up to the crest of an old eroded mountain. And somewhere up there were the ruins of the abandoned monastery. It would be his ultimate rendezvous, the place where the central issue of his life would be resolved. Up there was the battleground where he felt sure he would either prevail or die.

  He almost missed the place. The only light on the whole mountainside was his own flashlight; the only sound, the steady beat of the late-winter rain in the barren woods.

  He stumbled over a boulder. Under his flashlight he saw that it was dressed, squared, with traces of cement on one face—a stone from some kind of structure, a building or a bridge. Searching for more stones, he turned off the broken road and struggled through low brush. He came upon others, finally a piece of standing wall, then flagstone paving covered with sand and pebbles. A spout of water fell from some wall high above and spattered on the flagstones. A capricious breeze whipped the skirts of his poncho.

  He sensed the presence of another. In fact, he felt he was being watched. Back and forth he strode several times, searching for Timothy, then he called the Magus’s name. The only answer was a faint echo in the ruins.

  “Timothy,” he called.

  “’Mothy,” answered the walls.

  “Timothy.”

  “’Mothy.”

  The feeling that someone was there in the ruins watching him was growing stronger.

  “Is anyone here?” he called.

  “Here,” answered the walls.

  Brendan strode up and down the walkway with his flashlight and vaguely pieced together in his mind the former architectural arrangement. There evidently had been a two-floor residence building with sleeping quarters, refectory, kitchen, storerooms and other areas. This was coupled to the chapel by a long roofed-over walkway. Beyond the monastery were the remains of an old stone barn.

  Roofing tiles were strewn on the ground everywhere, and in one corner of the destroyed residence he found several old roof beams, heavier than ship’s timbers and partly eaten away by carpenter ants. When the beams had fallen, part of the roof had come down with them.

  Timothy wasn’t there.

  At the other end of the residence the floor was dry, and he spent a few minutes clearing away debris in order to spread his sleeping bag out. The spattering of dribbled rainwater crackled in the night. It was too early to go to sleep, too dark to do anything else. So Brendan sat alone in the wet night with his thoughts, while he brewed a cup of coffee on his Primus stove.

  How improbable it all seemed, sitting here in a mountain rainstorm, in the ruins of a monastery, waiting for a fallen angel, fearful of an attack from a homicidal demon, and at the same time expecting to participate in a battle of cosmic proportions. Absurd.

  He thought he heard footsteps. He cocked his head and tried to locate them in the many noises of the rain. They sounded like sandals slowly pacing over the sandy floor, approaching him. He scanned the darkness. Was that the silhouette of a monk approaching him? It was a clot of blackness and it seemed to be swaying from side to side. Then it stopped and stood there, gazing at him.

  In sudden alarm Brendan jumped to his feet and groped for his flashlight. He couldn’t find it.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded. The figure didn’t answer him. Brendan’s hands groped along the length of his sleeping bag again. “Damn!” he muttered. Was it moving closer to him now? Brendan stood and stepped back.

  “What do you want?” he shouted.

  The figure moved another stride toward him. Brendan stepped back and felt his foot kick the flashlight. He crouched quickly and groped for it. He couldn’t find it. He stood once more. The figure had moved again, closer. Brendan’s foot kicked the flashlight again and this time he found it.

  He lit it. Nothing was there. Urgently he flashed the light about him, along the ruined walls with their long dark rain stains and along the floor with its scattered blocks of stone and pebbles. He was quite alone.

  He might have dozed sitting on his sleeping bag with a half cup of cold coffee still in his hand. A sound like falling pebbles somewhere roused him. He listened again. A few more pebbles fell. Then distinctly he heard the sound of footsteps again, crackling along the flagstones, slowly approaching him.

  Brendan stood up. “Who’s there?” he demanded. He waited, watching, as the steps drew closer. When he perceived the figure again with its cowled head, the flashlight was ready. He turned it on.

  Nothing. There was nothing there. He walked over to the spot. There was some trick of sound caused by the rain. He sat on his sleeping bag for an hour wide-awake, waiting for the footsteps again. But they never came. When he grew drowsy, he slipped into his sleeping bag and in a moment he was sound asleep.

  Footsteps woke him again. The rain was still pouring down, and the many runoffs from the old roof spattered and dribbled all about him. These footsteps were like sandals walking on the crackling sand on the flagstones.

  “Away. Come away,” cooed a low voice. “Away. Come away. Quickly. Quickly. Quickly.” And the feet scuffled off in the darkness.

  Brendan sat up. Had he dreamed it? He lay propped on one elbow, listening attentively. It was as dark as ever and the storm hadn’t diminished a bit. He lay back and wondered what to do.

  Then the sound of sandals came up to him again.

  “Away. Come away,” the low voice called. “Away. Come away. Quickly. Quickly. Quickly. Follow me.”

  Brendan seized his flashlight and hurried after the voice.

  “Stop!” he called. “Whoever you are, stop!”

  He didn’t find the scuffling feet, or the voice. His flashlight uncovered nothing but the old stone walls and tumbled debris. He turned to go back to his sleeping bag. He would pack his stuff and clear out to come back in the morning—even at the risk of being seen in daylight.

  He heard a clatter. It sounded like falling pebbles. Then came heavy splats of falling water, then a boom that shook the floor like a wrecker’s ball. He shone the flashlight around and illuminated his camping equipment.

  Everything was in good order except the sleeping bag. Resting on it where it fell was a huge square stone. It easily weighed fifty pounds. He would have been killed outright by it if he’d not gotten out of his bag to pursue the phantom footsteps. Something had saved his life.

  He rolled the stone off his sleeping bag. Then he moved the bag a few feet away, drank the last of his cold coffee and got back into the bag. He lay listening for the return of the footsteps, sure he would not sleep another minute that night.

  He was awakened by the licking tongue of Repentance. It was morning and when he sat up, he looked past the spraddled legs of Timothy at the grim face of dawn. A mumbling rain fell on the soaking woods. Not far from him sat the fifty-pound s
tone that had crashed down onto his sleeping bag. He wondered if someone had deliberately dropped it.

  “We have so little time,” Timothy said. “And we have so much to do. But first I want to explain what’s happening to you.” And he began with Brendan’s purple aura. He explained the relentless contest between him and Satan to find it. Then he told the story of the war in heaven, the creation of hell and the destruction of Eden and the Lord’s pronouncement about finding a purple aura.

  Timothy told Brendan of his endless life of wandering the earth, companioned by despair and loneliness and forced to witness man’s terrible history from the day Adam and Eve were put out of Paradise.

  “If you forgive me, Brendan,” Timothy said, “then I will return to heaven, and Satan and his legions will suffer final punishment.”

  The ruined monastery was just as he had pieced it out in the darkness: an H with the living quarters on one side and the chapel on the other, connected by a covered walkway. Beyond the living quarters stood the barn, larger than he had imagined. There had been a dairy herd, a pigpen, a hen house and a number of acres of cultivated land now overrun with lofty oaks more than fifty years old.

  Short sections of the original stone walls were still visible in the underbrush, but even in these the trees had been at work and had spilled most of them.

  There was a dripping everywhere inside the structure. Great holes in the roof showed wherever he looked. Of the two buildings, the chapel was in the better condition, although there were many gaping holes in the roof here too, through which rain poured. Most of the interior woodwork was long gone: the choir stalls, the pews, the kneelers and the benches. The pulpit in stone still endured but all that was left of the altar was just a raised stone dais. All the other trappings and furnishings were gone.

  There had been two stained-glass windows; now there were just two narrow arch-shaped window holes in the stone walls, stained darkly from the rain, looking like the battered, stunned eyes of a beaten pugilist.