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When the precentor took his place for morning Lauds, there were still three empty seats in the church choir. Niccoluccio glanced through the open door. No hint of them in the cloister walk, either. He was the only one to look. The other brothers silently raised their seat lids. If they knew anything about what had happened, of course they could not say.
Then the precentor began reciting the Lord’s Prayer, beginning the Divine Office. The empty seats dropped away from Niccoluccio’s mind. It was enough of an effort to stay awake. A steady weight grew behind his eyes. He’d had difficulty finding sleep again after the nightly Vigils.
He had thought that, by now, his body should be used to rousing two hours after midnight. He had spent most of the night staring at the wood slats overlying his cell. He couldn’t explain the unease that settled over him then. It felt like the shadow of a cloud crossing the moon. A chill draft carried under the door, one of the many heavy breaths of winter.
Some of the unease lingered into Lauds, but this time it was easy to explain away as exhaustion. When he was allowed to open his eyes, he surreptitiously glanced around the back of the seats, looking for any of the leftover peppercorns the other brothers chewed during Vigils to help them stay awake. There were none.
He steeled himself to push through the hymns and the psalms. By the time the precentor fell silent, he was nearly awake again. A moment of silence lingered in the choir. Niccoluccio rose to his feet with the other brothers. The novices left first. Niccoluccio waited his turn to join the procession filing out. His choir neighbor, the German monk Gerbodo, silently fell into place alongside him.
Out in the cloister’s daylight, Niccoluccio almost felt better again. The cold wind was at once uncomfortable and purifying – stepping out into it was like splashing cold water on his face. Sacro Cuore’s founders had meant for the cloister walk to be symbolic of Paradise. Frost fringed the grass in the center. The sunlight was beautiful, but so bright that it was impossible, even reflected in the snow, to look at for longer than an instant.
The glare hid the state of most of the buildings around him. The Sacro Cuore Charterhouse was not the place it had once been – at least, not according to the older brothers’ tales. The monastery had been built to keep a watch on the Via Romea di Stade, a pilgrim’s road that ran through northern Tuscany. It lent shelter to, and took donations from, travelers on their way to the Holy City. Today, with the papacy relocated to Avignon, and Rome ruled by mobs, few people traveled the old pilgrimage road. But Sacro Cuore remained.
Sacro Cuore’s water clock had been replaced with a new mechanical device, but everything else just kept getting older. The infirmary’s roof still sagged from the weight of last year’s snow. The brothers who’d spent more than a night there said they forced themselves to feel better just to get away from the drafts.
The library had once been its own building, but, as Sacro Cuore’s numbers dwindled, too many of the books had been sold to other monasteries. Now the “library” was in a cupboard in the chapter house on the east side of the cloister.
The dormitory stood to the east. Two of the monastery’s dogs sunned themselves beside it. The building seemed fine from the outside, but most of the cells stood empty and dust-ridden, with rushes that hadn’t been changed in years. Only the rooms still in use were cleaned. Decades ago, the monastery had housed over one hundred brothers. Now fifty-two, plus seven novices, lived inside its walls. The community of laymen who helped with fieldwork had shrunk by a similar proportion.
Niccoluccio could see the disrepair if he looked closely, but he didn’t care to. With the exception of the infirmary’s roof, Sacro Cuore had looked like this the day he’d arrived, twelve years ago. All the elder brothers’ tales of more affluent days were just sand in his ears. He was one of the few of the younger brothers who’d come here knowing what to expect.
Niccoluccio glanced instead to the seyney house, where all the monastery’s bloodletting took place. His last bloodletting had been only a month ago. The memory still made him queasy. The infirmarer nearly hadn’t been able to close Niccoluccio’s vein in time, and Niccoluccio had fainted watching. But he had felt better afterward. The other brothers had all left pale and lightheaded, but significantly less burdened by their hot blood and bad humors. After a bloodletting, the air felt cooler, food sweeter, and sleep deeper and less troubled by dreams. Even Brother Lomellini, their old goat of a prior, always breathed easier after a bloodletting.
Maybe that was what he needed to put this bad temper behind him. His stomach instinctively clenched at the thought of it. But last night’s disquiet had been unlike anything he’d felt since his last bleed. It could only have come from some deep, hateful restlessness within him.
His body had been born in order to be mortified. Every year that passed in Sacro Cuore, he understood that a little better. If his body recoiled at the memory, then that was a sign that he needed to force it onward.
Most of other brothers glided towards their cells for contemplation before Prime, the next of the Divine Offices after Lauds. Niccoluccio turned away from the procession, and toward the infirmary. The infirmarer had been one of the three brothers absent from Lauds, and he might find him there.
A gentle hand on his shoulder stopped him.
Gerbodo stood beside him, his hood raised. A short, brown fuzz stood out between the ring of hair that circled the rest of his head. He was overdue for another tonsuring. He gently pulled Niccoluccio back into the procession.
In the otherwise-voiceless environment of the monastery, Gerbodo had become Niccoluccio’s natural companion. They spoke as often as two Carthusian brothers could – perhaps twice a week. There was no opportunity to exchange words now, though. They were too close to the other brothers.
Once again, disquiet cast its shadow. Niccoluccio frowned, but let Gerbodo lead him away. Gerbodo’s lips were locked in a tight line.
Back in his cell, Niccoluccio was left alone with the library’s copy of Saint Jerome’s Letters. He paged through the book for several minutes, recalling passages from memory. He strolled to the back door, to his little garden, and sifted through the dirt. He knew better than to try meditation in this state. Instead, he dug little furrows in the soil with his fingers, tending the garden as if it were still summer.
Silence permeated the rest of his day. It was comfortable, familiar, but for once stifling rather than liberating. Words had to wait until supper, in the refectory.
The brothers of Sacro Cuore ate as a group once a week, on Sundays. On other days, like today, they were left to their own devices. Niccoluccio was returning from his evening inspection of the novices’ dormitory when he spied Gerbodo taking a quick turn toward the refectory door. Gerbodo glanced once in Niccoluccio’s direction, and then disappeared inside. Niccoluccio made discreet haste to follow.
The refectory was as plain inside as out: wood walls, floors littered with rushes that hadn’t been changed in weeks, and endlessly chilly. Niccoluccio and Gerbodo silently dipped their hands into the lavatorium basin. The cold water was a bracing shock. Dirt slaked off Gerbodo’s hands. Niccoluccio wondered what he’d been up to all day.
Warm gusts issued from the kitchen door. Four brothers and one novice sat at the tables nearest the kitchen, eating in silence. Niccoluccio frowned. Usually, this close to Vespers, it was much busier. Brother Stefano, an older monk balding even below his tonsure line, drifted from the kitchen. He looked expectantly at Niccoluccio and Gerbodo. Niccoluccio signed a circle in the air with his forefinger, and then tugged at his pinkie, the signs for bread and milk.
During Sunday meals, Prior Lomellini enforced the brothers’ silence with a reading from scripture. Right now, the brothers had nothing but their own consciences to keep them quiet. Niccoluccio and Gerbodo sat far from the others. After a quick glance at them, Gerbodo muttered one word: “Pestilence.”
“I…” It had been so long since the last time Niccoluccio had tried to speak that he needed a m
oment to find his voice. “I wouldn’t have disturbed any brothers resting in the infirmary.”
Gerbodo looked at him as though he were a particularly ignorant child. “Not sickness,” he said. “Pestilence.”
Now it was Niccoluccio’s turn to give him a strange look. He couldn’t help the feeling of sinking in his stomach. It probably showed.
Gerbodo asked, “You haven’t heard?”
There was very little to “hear” in the cloisters of most Carthusian monasteries. Outside of prayer and clandestine meetings like this, the brothers only spoke during their communal meetings at the chapter house. Niccoluccio had missed the last two meetings, first to take his turn in the kitchen, and then to inspect the storehouses before winter.
The other brothers had seemed more withdrawn than usual recently. He’d attributed it to the end of autumn and the lack of travelers. Gerbodo said, “You need to pay more attention to the whispers.”
Brother Stefano asked, just as quietly, “And how often do you whisper?”
Niccoluccio reddened. He hadn’t heard the whisper of Stefano’s robes beside him. Ordinarily, such a noise never would have escaped his attention. Stefano watched them archly, like they were a pair of novices. Lines underscored the older man’s eyes. After a moment, he set their bread and milk in front of them.
“This is a time to make peace with God,” he said, and strode back into the kitchen.
Niccoluccio looked down, not daring to meet Gerbodo’s eyes again. Gerbodo had spoken of whispers. How often did he and the other monks speak? Niccoluccio certainly had never been invited to hear them.
Gerbodo curled his fingers into claw crooks and drew them across his eyes, as if rending them. Niccoluccio hadn’t seen the sign very often. It was the brothers’ universal sign for trouble and disaster.
The pit in the center of his chest lingered through Vespers and the nightly Compline service. The three empty seats in the church remained unfilled. The infirmarer’s seat, too, remained empty. When the last of the Divine Office ended, Niccoluccio saw several of the other brothers glance at them when they could. Gerbodo kept his gaze lowered, and wouldn’t look at Niccoluccio.
Niccoluccio sat beside his wooden bed. Usually a moment’s peace and meditation helped him sleep. He went through the motions, knowing it wouldn’t help. All the sounds of the night impeded his concentration: the shifting and creaking of floorboards as the brothers settled in, the scrabbling of the rats who quartered with them.
He heard no whispers, or any discreet footsteps from one cell to another. Gerbodo had said that the other brothers spoke often, but it must not have been at night. By design, the slightest movements were audible to everyone in the hall.
Niccoluccio had never quite fit in among his cohort. He was too young, too ready for monastic living. The other brothers had come here later in life, after they’d chased other goals, and usually failed. He and Gerbodo had been novices together, but Gerbodo was ten years older than him.
To his father’s dismay, Niccoluccio had wanted nothing other than to be a monk since he was sixteen. There had already been too much to put behind him. He’d come when he’d turned twenty-two, the youngest any Carthusian charterhouse would accept him.
He was avoiding the real problem. He knew now where last night’s disquiet had originated. The peace of the monastery was always replete with noises, even now. The susurration of the wind, padding of footsteps, clearing of throats, coughing, the endless creak of the floorboards.
He may not have been a part of Gerbodo’s network of chatterers, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in touch with everything around him. He had been here twelve years. Every part of Sacro Cuore was more familiar than his own toes. Today and yesterday, something had been wrong. The dormitory had been quieter, as if the brothers had been afraid to leave their cells.
Niccoluccio climbed into bed fully clothed, keeping his cowl up until he’d pulled the sheet past his elbows. He hadn’t counted on sleeping, but he startled awake at a sharp rapping in the cloister. It was the sacrist, beating his wooden tabula to call the brothers for Vigils.
He shuffled into the church in darkness. The brothers lit no candles. Prior Lomellini led the prayers by memory, his voice sharp enough to keep Niccoluccio awake all by itself. Even surrounded by shadows, Niccoluccio could see that the empty seats remained unfilled, and the infirmarer hadn’t joined them.
He could detect no change in Prior Lomellini’s voice, but the rest of the choir was oddly quiet. He heard no stifled yawns, no chewing of peppercorns. All the brothers, even the novices, were wide awake two hours past midnight.
Only a few minutes after the next morning’s Lauds, the sacrist stood in front of the chapter house and once again beat his stick against his tabula. A summons to a communal meeting. Most of the other brothers had somehow contrived to be nearby the chapter house. Niccoluccio was one of the last to arrive, once again wondering how word spread.
The chapter house only had a few articles of furniture: a table with several chairs, and three rows of benches facing it. Prior Lomellini and the monastery’s other office-holders – including, Niccoluccio noted, the infirmarer, Brother Rinieri, who looked exhausted – were already around the table. Niccoluccio took a seat on the rear benches.
Lomellini’s gaze passed over each of them, as if to mark their faces. The brothers’ tonsures, hoods, and identical rough robes deemphasized their individuality. Lomellini’s eyes flickered over Niccoluccio only a moment. Niccoluccio was taller than all but a few of the brothers. Even sitting behind two rows of brothers, he had no problem seeing the front.
Lomellini stood. He had always struck Niccoluccio as disturbingly political for a monk. Niccoluccio had known no time here free of him. He had once been Niccoluccio’s novice-master. Shortly after Niccoluccio had graduated from his novitiate, the old prior died and Lomellini succeeded him. Lomellini peered at the brothers cannily; not like a father judging his children, but a guard hound sizing up an intruder.
Carthusian monasteries had no abbots. Lomellini was the prior in charge of the chapter house. Unlike the abbots of the Florentine monasteries Niccoluccio visited as a child, Lomellini showed no symptoms of the privileges of his position. No wide girth, no soft and flabby cheeks or jowls. He had a prominent, horse-like nose and a sharp jaw. Wisps of gray hair floated out from under his hood. He might have been naturally balding, but his tonsure made it impossible to tell.
“The news you have heard is true,” he said, abruptly. “Two of our number have been stricken by the Genoan pestilence.”
The silence was, on its surface, identical to the silence that preceded it, and that which was the natural state of affairs at Sacro Cuore. Nevertheless, Niccoluccio read a hundred flickering emotions in it. He looked straight ahead, refusing to look at any brother.
Lomellini said, “A number of you have come to me in confidence and asked for leave to depart. I have many reasons to decline these requests. However, as news continues to reach us, the circumstances seem to override those reasons.”
He seemed to be searching for something else to say, but couldn’t find it. Two novices in the back row whispered something to each other. Lomellini did not spare any harsh looks for them, itself a sign of the gravity of the situation. A pair of brothers took that as license to do the same.
From the whisperings and from Lomellini’s words later, Niccoluccio was able to piece together the news that had reached the charterhouse.
A pestilence of incredible mortality had descended upon the Italian coast. It had started only weeks ago, and already swept inland as fast as a crow in flight. Its speed made Niccoluccio feel a little better about having missed the news until now. The reports must have only reached Sacro Cuore days ago, especially since most travelers this time of year came from the north, on Christmas pilgrimages to Rome. A handful came from the south, though. Now, it seemed the travelers who’d brought the news had also carried the pestilence with them. The speed of it had plainly caught Prior Lomelli
ni by surprise. He’d probably thought he’d had more time to prepare. Niccoluccio had never seen him falter for control of the room.
Niccoluccio tried to remain unmoved. Surely these stories were exaggerated. Yet they all agreed upon the symptoms of the disease. The stricken developed black bulbs on their legs, or neck, or in the pits underneath their arms. The growths were exquisitely painful, and, more strangely, loud. They gurgled like water circling a drain. They couldn’t be popped like pustules, and the bearers would do anything to keep anyone from trying.
Brother Durante claimed to have heard from their lay stablekeeper that two out of every three men in Genoa had perished, and that no child survived in Orvieto. Pietro, a novice, called the pustules “death’s tokens.” He said that anyone who had them would perish within a day.
Niccoluccio remained sitting, his hands folded in his lap. The best way to weather this storm, like all storms, was to let it pass over him. He would not participate in this breach of decorum. He kept his gaze fixed on Lomellini.
The prior cleared his throat. Somehow he managed to be louder in that than anyone else in the room. The novices fell silent. “Brother Rainuccio, Brother Durante, Brother Gerbodo, I have heard your requests and am willing to give them proper public consideration.”
A seat ahead, Gerbodo shifted uncomfortably. Here were Lomellini’s political instincts: not only had Lomellini singled out the brothers who had come to him in private, but he held up a finger before any of them could speak: “I must caution you, however. We have no place for you to go. There are no transfers to other charterhouses available this year, and, by the judgment of our Father, they would likely be afflicted by this same pestilence.
“We must decide as a community – as a single body – how to react to this emergency. With death ravaging the coasts, we may shortly be inundated with refugees. They will need shelter and succor, the aid of Christ’s body. However, they will also no doubt be bringing their affliction with them. I will not decide for you how you will face this crisis. I have called you here to ask each of you, in turn, how you will answer your calling.”
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