by Louise Penny
Gamache slipped into the pew, Beauvoir beside him. They sat quietly, waiting for the service to begin. Again, the Chief marveled at the light falling through the high windows. Split into all different colors. It spilled onto the altar and the benches and seemed to dance there. Waiting happily for the company of the monks.
The Chief glanced around the now familiar space. It felt as though he’d been there a very long time, and it came as a surprise he and Beauvoir hadn’t yet spent a full day at Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups.
The Blessed Chapel, Gamache now knew, was built to honor a saint so dull the Church couldn’t find some equally dull complaint to let him patronize.
Few prayed to Saint Gilbert.
And yet in his excruciatingly long life, Gilbert had done one spectacular thing. He’d stood up to a king. He’d defended his archbishop. Thomas had been killed, but Gilbert had stood up to tyranny, and survived.
Gamache remembered joking with the abbot that maybe Gilbert could become the Patron Saint of Fretters, since his monastery had such strong defenses and locked doors.
And so many places to hide.
But maybe he’d been wrong, done Gilbert a disservice. He might have fretted, but Gilbert had finally found more courage than anyone else. Sitting quietly in the refracted light, Gamache wondered if he’d have the same courage.
He spent a moment thinking about the new visitor, and praying to Saint Gilbert.
As the last note of the solemn bell resonated the monks entered. They appeared in single file. Singing. White hoods hid their faces. Hands were buried up to the elbows in their loose black sleeves. The singing grew as more voices entered the Blessed Chapel, until the empty space was filled with the plainchant. And the light.
And then someone else entered.
Chief Superintendent Francoeur bobbed, crossed himself, then, despite all sorts of empty pews, he slipped into the one directly in front of Gamache and Beauvoir, obscuring their view.
And once again the Chief Inspector tilted his head slightly to the side. Hoping to see more clearly. The monks. But also the motives of the man in front of him. Who’d dropped so precipitously from the skies, with a purpose.
As Beauvoir huffed and snorted beside him, Gamache closed his eyes and listened to the beautiful music.
And thought about tyranny, and murder.
And whether it was ever right to kill one for the sake of the many.
EIGHTEEN
“Are you lost?”
Beauvoir spun around to confront the voice.
“I only ask because it’s unusual to find someone here.”
A monk was standing in the thick forest, a few feet from Beauvoir. It was as though he’d suddenly materialized. Beauvoir recognized him. It was the monk from the chocolate factory, who’d been covered in dribbled dark chocolate the last time Beauvoir had seen him. Now he had on a clean cassock and was carrying a basket. Like Little Red Riding Hood. Entre-les-Loups, thought Beauvoir. Among the wolves.
“No, I’m not lost,” he said, and tried to quickly roll up the plan of Saint-Gilbert. But it was way too late for that. The monk was standing very still, just watching. It made Beauvoir feel foolish and wary. It was disconcerting to be around people who were so still and so quiet. And so stealthy.
“Can I help you with something?” asked the monk.
“I was just…” Beauvoir waved the semi-rolled plan.
“Looking?” he smiled. Beauvoir half expected to see long canine teeth, but instead it was a small, almost tentative grin. “I’m looking too,” said the monk, “but probably not for the same thing.”
It was the kind of vaguely patronizing remark Beauvoir expected from a religieux. He was probably on some spiritual quest, so much more worthy than whatever the bumbling human in front of him might be about. The monk was strolling the forest looking for inspiration or salvation, or God. Praying or meditating. While Beauvoir was looking for treasure.
“Ah,” said the monk. “Found some.”
He stooped, then stood back up and offered his palm to Beauvoir. Tiny wild blueberries rolled together in the valley of the man’s hand.
“They’re perfect,” said the monk.
Beauvoir looked at them. They looked like every other wild blueberry he’d ever seen.
“Please.” The monk moved his palm closer and Beauvoir took a single tiny berry. It was like trying to pick up an atom.
He popped it in his mouth and there was an immediate wallop of flavor far out of proportion to the portion. It tasted, not surprisingly, of blueberry. But it also tasted like autumn in Québec. Sweet and musky.
This monk was right. It really was perfect.
He took another, as did the monk.
The two men stood in the shadow of the tall wall of the abbot’s garden, eating berries. Just a few feet away, over the wall, was a manicured garden, beautifully planted and cared for. With lawns and flower beds, clipped bushes and benches.
But here, on this side of the wall, there were tiny perfect blueberries.
There was also a tangle of undergrowth so thick it had scratched Beauvoir’s legs through his slacks as he’d plowed his way through the thickets. He’d been following the line of the monastery, on foot, and on paper. He’d borrowed rubber boots from the monks, and found himself stepping into muck, climbing over downed tree trunks and scrambling over rocks. Trying to figure out if the lines on the page matched the walls of the actual abbey.
“How’d you sneak up on me?”
“Sneak?” the monk laughed. “I’m just doing my rounds. There’s a path over there. Why didn’t you take that?”
“Well, I would have had I known,” said Beauvoir, not altogether sure they were talking about the same thing. He’d worked long enough with Chief Inspector Gamache to smell an allegory.
“My name’s Bernard,” said the monk, sticking out his purple-stained hand.
“Beauvoir.” The handshake surprised Beauvoir. He’d expected a soft, doughy hand, but instead it was firm and assured, the skin far tougher than his own.
“Wow, look at that.” Frère Bernard stooped again and stayed there, kneeling and plucking berries. Beauvoir knelt as well, and peered at the ground. Slowly, instead of seeing just a riot of twigs and moss and dried leaves, he began to see what Frère Bernard had been looking for.
Not salvation, but the tiniest of wild fruit.
“My God,” laughed Bernard. “It’s the mother lode. I’ve been along that path every fall for years and never knew this was here.”
“You can’t be suggesting it’s sometimes good to wander from the path.” Beauvoir was pleased with himself. He could give good allegory too.
The monk laughed again. “Touché.”
They spent the next few minutes crawling around the undergrowth, collecting blueberries.
“Well,” said Frère Bernard at last, standing and stretching and brushing twigs from his cassock. “This must be a record.” He looked at his basket, piled high with berries. “You’re my good-luck charm. Merci.”
Beauvoir felt quite pleased with himself.
“Now,” said Bernard, pointing to a couple of flat rocks. “It’s my turn to help you.”
Beauvoir hesitated. He’d stuck the plan of the monastery in a bush, where it would be safe while they picked the berries. Now he looked over at it. Bernard followed his gaze, but said nothing.
Beauvoir retrieved the plan and the two men sat facing each other on the rocks.
“What’re you looking for?” asked the monk.
Still Beauvoir hesitated. Then made up his mind and unrolled the plan.
Frère Bernard lowered his gaze from Beauvoir’s face to the vellum. His eyes widened slightly. “Dom Clément’s plan of the monastery,” he said. “We’d heard he’d made one. He was a famous architect in his day, you know. Then he joined the Gilbertines and disappeared along with the other twenty-three monks. No one knew where they went. No one much cared, actually. The Gilbertines were never a rich or powerful order. Just t
he opposite. So when the monastery in France was abandoned everyone just assumed the order had disbanded or died out.”
“But they hadn’t,” said Beauvoir, also staring at the plan.
“No. They came here. Might as well have been the moon, in those days.”
“Why’d they come?”
“They were afraid of the Inquisition.”
“But if they were so poor and marginal, why were they afraid?”
“Why is anyone afraid? Most of the time it’s all in their heads. Has nothing to do with reality. I imagine the Inquisition couldn’t have cared less about the Gilbertines, but they took off anyway. Just in case. That could be our motto. Just in case. Exsisto paratus.”
“You’ve never seen this before?” Beauvoir pointed to the drawing.
Frère Bernard shook his head. He seemed lost in the lines on the page. “It’s fascinating,” said the monk, leaning closer, “seeing Dom Clément’s actual plans. I wonder if this was made before or after Saint-Gilbert was built.”
“Would it matter?”
“Maybe not, but one would be the ideal, the other would be the reality. If it was made after, then this shows what’s really here. Not what they might have wanted then changed their minds.”
“You know the monastery,” said Beauvoir. “What do you think?”
For a few minutes Frère Bernard bowed his head over the vellum, sometimes tracing the ink with his blueberry finger. He gave a few grunts. Hummed a bit. Shook his head, then backed up his finger to follow another line, another corridor.
Finally he looked up and met Beauvoir’s eyes.
“There’s something wrong with this drawing.”
Beauvoir felt a thrill, a frisson. “What?”
“The scale’s off. You see here and here—”
“The vegetable garden and the place for the animals.”
“Right. They’re shown as the same size as the abbot’s garden. But they’re not. In reality, they’re at least twice the size.”
It was true. Beauvoir remembered picking the squash that morning with Frère Antoine. The vegetable garden had been huge. But the abbot’s garden, the murder scene, was much smaller.
“But how do you know?” asked Beauvoir. “Have you ever been in the abbot’s garden?” He glanced to the tall wall.
“Never, but I’ve been around it. Looking for berries. I’ve also been around the other gardens. This plan,” he looked back down, “is wrong.”
“So what does that mean?” asked Beauvoir. “Why would Dom Clément do that?”
Bernard considered, then shook his head. “Hard to say. The Church had a way of exaggerating things. If you see some of the old paintings, the baby Jesus looks about ten years old when he was born. And old maps of cities show cathedrals much bigger than they actually were. Dominating their surroundings.”
“So you think Dom Clément exaggerated the size of the abbot’s garden? But why?”
Again the monk shook his head. “Vanity, maybe. To make the drawing look more to scale. Church architecture has little tolerance for anything unusual, out of balance. This looks better on paper,” again the monk gestured toward the drawing, “than the real thing. Though the real thing functions better in reality.”
Again Beauvoir was taken by the clash of perception and reality in this monastery. And the choice to reflect what looked good rather than what was truthful.
Frère Bernard continued to study the drawing. “If Dom Clément had drawn it exactly as it is, the monastery wouldn’t look like a crucifix anymore. It’d look like a bird. Two big wings and a shorter body.”
“So he cheated?”
“I suppose that’s one way of putting it.”
“Could he have cheated in other areas of the plan?” asked Beauvoir. Though he knew the answer to that. When someone deceived once, they’d do it again.
“I suppose.” The monk looked as though one of the angels had fallen. “But I can’t see anything else wrong. Why does it matter?”
“It might not.” Beauvoir rolled the plan back up. “You asked what I was looking for. I’m looking for a hidden room.”
“Like the Chapter House?”
“We know about that one. I’m looking for another.”
“So there is one.”
“We don’t know. We’ve just heard rumors, and obviously you have too.”
For the first time in their conversation Beauvoir sensed a hesitation in the monk. As though a door had slowly swung shut. As though Frère Bernard had his own hidden room.
Of course, everyone had one. And it was his job, and the Chief’s, to find those too. Unfortunately for them those rooms almost never hid treasure. What they invariably found were mountains of crap.
“If there really is a secret room in the monastery, you need to tell me,” Beauvoir pressed.
“I don’t know of any.”
“But you’ve heard rumors?”
“There’re always rumors. I heard that one the first day I arrived.”
“For a silent order you seem to do a lot of talking.”
Bernard smiled. “We’re not completely silent, you know. We’re allowed to talk at certain times of the day.”
“And one of the things you talk about is secret rooms?”
“If you’re only allowed a few minutes’ conversation a day, what do you think you’d talk about? The weather? Politics?”
“Secrets?”
Frère Bernard smiled. “Sometimes the divine mystery, and sometimes just mysteries. Like hidden rooms. And treasure.”
He gave Beauvoir a knowing look. A sharp look. This monk, thought Beauvoir, might be calm and even gentle. But he was no fool.
“Do you think they exist?”
“A room and some treasure lugged here by Dom Clément and the other monks centuries ago?” Frère Bernard shook his head. “It’s fun to think about. Passes the time on cold winter nights. But no one really believes it exists. Someone would’ve found it ages ago. The abbey’s been renovated, updated, repaired. If there was a secret room we’d have found it.”
“Maybe someone did.” Beauvoir stood. “So, how often are you allowed to leave?”
The monk laughed. “It’s not a prison, you know.”
But even Frère Bernard had to admit, from that angle, Saint-Gilbert sure looked like one.
“We leave whenever we want, though we don’t go far. Walks, mostly. We look for berries and firewood. We fish. In the winter we play hockey on the ice. Frère Antoine organizes that.”
Beauvoir felt again that vertigo. Frère Antoine played hockey. Was probably the captain and the center. The same position Beauvoir played.
“In the summer some of us jog and do tai chi. You’re welcome to join us after Vigils.”
“Is that the early morning service?”
“Five A.M.” He smiled. “Your Chief was there this morning.”
Beauvoir was about to say something sharp, to shut down any ridiculing of Gamache, when he saw that Frère Bernard seemed simply amused. Not mocking.
“Yes, he mentioned it to me,” said Beauvoir.
“We talked later, you know.”
“Oh, really?” But Beauvoir knew perfectly well it was Frère Bernard the Chief had spoken to that morning in the showers and that they’d then collected eggs together. Brother Bernard had told the Chief about the rift in the community. In fact, Chief Inspector Gamache had the impression the monk had sought him out specifically to tell him that.
And only then did it occur to Beauvoir to wonder if the same thing was happening here. Had this monk simply been out collecting blueberries and stumbled upon him? Or was this no accident? Had Frère Bernard seen Beauvoir leave, with the scroll, and followed him?
“Your Chief’s a good listener,” said the monk. “He’d fit in well here.”
“He does look good in a robe,” said Beauvoir.
Frère Bernard laughed. “I was afraid to say it.” The monk looked at Beauvoir, examining the younger man. “I think you’d also enj
oy it here.”
Enjoy? thought Beauvoir. Enjoy? Does anyone actually enjoy it here?
He’d presumed they tolerated it, like a hair shirt. It never occurred to him living in Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups actually made them happy.
Frère Bernard picked up his basket of blueberries and they walked a few paces before he spoke again. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully.
“I was surprised to see someone else arrive. We all were. Including your boss, I think. Who was that man who flew in?”
“His name’s Francoeur. He’s the Chief Superintendent.”
“Of the Sûreté?”
Beauvoir nodded. “The big boss.”
“Your pope,” said Bernard.
“Only if the pope’s a moron with a gun.”
Frère Bernard snorted then fought to wipe the smile from his face.
“You don’t like him?”
“Years of contemplation have sharpened your instincts, Frère Bernard.”
Again Bernard laughed. “People come from miles around to hear my insights.” Then his smile disappeared completely. “For instance, this Francoeur, he doesn’t like your boss, does he?”
This too, they both knew, wasn’t exactly an incredible feat of perception.
Beauvoir wondered what to say. His impulse was always to lie. He’d have made, he thought, a good medieval architect. He immediately wanted to deny there was a problem, to cover the truth. To at the very least hide the scale of it. But he could see that would be useless. This man had seen clearly, as had everyone else, Francoeur’s easy dismissal of Gamache on the dock.
“It goes back a few years. They had a disagreement over a fellow officer.”
Frère Bernard didn’t say anything. He simply listened. His face calm, his eyes noncommittal and attentive. They walked slowly through the forest, their feet crackling on the twigs and leaves, fallen to the well-trodden path. The sun broke through the trees in patches and every now and then they heard the scrambling of a chipmunk or a bird or some other wild creature.
Beauvoir waited a moment, then went on. Might as well, he thought. It was all public knowledge anyway. Unless you lived in a monastery in the middle of nowhere.