by Heide Goody
“Season,” came a croak.
“Yes!” said Stephen. “To everything there is a season. Ecclesiastes, isn’t it? It’s helpful to be reminded of that. Yes, thank you, Father Abbot, that’s a comfort. There’s something else as well. Bernard’s death isn’t the only thing on my mind.”
Stephen paused, and put his face a little closer to the gap in the wardrobe.
“Father,” he whispered, “you’re going to think I’m losing my mind, but I met a demon today. In the library.”
Father Eustace’s eye gave Stephen a look that urged him to continue.
“I tried to exorcise him, but he took it badly.”
“Temper,” said Father Eustace.
“Well, yes. He acted as if I was just being mean,” said Stephen.
“Christian!” shouted Father Eustace.
Stephen exhaled deeply.
“You’re right, Father Abbot. I failed to act like a good Christian. Demon or no demon, I was wrong to act in hatred towards him. I was expecting, I don’t know, tricks or torments or something. He seemed … he seemed as if he just wanted to have a chat.”
“Legion!”
“Of course. Even our Lord was willing to talk to demons, even to give them what they wanted. I handled it all wrong.”
“Jelly babies!” crowed Eustace, although Stephen failed to notice the hand that extended from the wardrobe.
“How did you know about that?” said Stephen, standing up. “I wouldn’t even let him have that small treat. Well, maybe I can make that better.”
He left the room without hearing the faint keening sound from the wardrobe, and the plaintive cry of “Jelly babies!”
Manfred was in the almonry when Bastian found him. It had, long ago, been a place where charity was dispensed to the poor. Up until last year, it had been a storage area which had contained a multitude of things, including Manfred’s illicit apple schnapps. Then, after the apple-scented explosion, it had briefly been a pile of rubble, then finally rebuilt as a general purpose workshop. In this space, Manfred collected up anything that he thought might be reusable and attempted to breathe new life into it.
“Ah, Bastian!” said Manfred. “You’re just in time to see the first test run!”
“Can I look later, Manfred? I'm in a bit of a hurry. Where are the bones?”
“Right here, my friend. Right here. Now, just take a moment. Nothing on Bardsey is so urgent that you cannot afford to take a little time to relax. Do you remember me saying that I had a plan to make a unique ossuary, something that has never been seen before?”
Bastian nodded impatiently, knowing he'd get no sense out of Manfred until he'd had his say.
“Well, this is my proof of concept for an animated ossuary. It's not complete, but you'll certainly get the idea. What we're going to show in this little tableau that I've designed is Jesus driving the moneylenders out of the temple.”
He picked up an orange power cord and plugged it in.
“This skeleton here is Jesus. You'll see him pushing towards these other skeletons here who are the moneylenders. I have used a motor from an old strimmer which is mounted on the back of this board, and it is connected to some cams and linkages that I made myself.”
Manfred gave a wink and switched on the power. The motor whined into action and sure enough, Manfred's cam translated the rotary movement of the strimmer into a rocking movement, and the Jesus skeleton, wired together with old coat hangers, tipped forwards and backwards, hands outstretched to drive off the frankly indifferent moneychanger skeletons that lounged around on chairs or sat in pieces on the floor.
Bastian chuckled, in spite of himself.
“Lovely effort, Manfred. Is it meant to make that clunking sound?”
“Oh, dear,” said Manfred. “Something has slipped, I think.”
There was an abrupt change in the pitch of the motor as it revved faster. The Jesus skeleton had stopped rocking and, to Bastian's horror, was now completing a full rotation, feet twirling through the air, as though Jesus had suddenly decided to take up breakdancing as a means to chasing off the moneychangers. As the Jesus skeleton’s path was clear, the second rotation was faster, and the next faster still, the skeleton rising up like a fairground centrifuge as it span.
“No. Wait,” shouted Manfred and would have thrust himself into the blades of that bony propeller if Bastian hadn’t held him out of its reach. Jesus’s feet sliced through, ground against and generally dashed the moneylenders to pieces. Wires tangled, mangled limbs flailed about, and the skeletons were obliterated by the impact of the spinning bones smashing repeatedly against them at high speed.
Manfred dived under the lethal Jesus’s range for the power switch, just as the last remaining pieces of the skeletal son of God flew off and smashed against the wall.
Bastian was speechless, and gaped at Manfred, who nodded briefly and then inspected the back of the board.
“Yes, I can see what's happened here,” said Manfred. “I'll need to adjust –”
“Manfred!” bellowed Bastian. “I sold those bones! They're worth thousands to the guy that wants them! The boat's on its way over to collect them.”
Manfred raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“... and you were going to mention this when?”
“I'm mentioning it now! He only wants complete skeletons though. Look at the state of these.” He kicked through the tiny white chunks on the floor. “We haven't got a single one.”
Manfred surveyed the pile of smashed bones.
“Oh, I don't know. I have some strong adhesive here. If we get a diagram of how a human skeleton goes together I’m sure we –”
“We don't have time for jigsaw puzzles!” shouted Bastian. “The boat's on its way now.”
Bastian briefly wondered whether he could use the body of Brother Bernard, but aside from the legal and ethical problems, he really wasn't sure how quickly it was possible to render all flesh off a body. Right now, he mused, if he had the means, he’d happily render down Manfred’s bones to hand over to Chuck Katzenberger.
As the monks came to terms with the death of one of their own, the evening meal in the refectory was a subdued affair, although the dressing-gown clad Brother Henry wouldn’t let go of his tasteless little joke.
“… but now, I don't think he was calling Huey,” he was saying at the table across from Stephen. “I think he was retching.”
He leaned forward, puffing out his cheeks theatrically, and made a protracted vomiting sound.
“Huu-eeeugh!”
Stephen tried to close his ears and his mind to Brother Henry’s insensitivity. He looked away and saw Brother Huey, sat apart from his brothers, lost in his thoughts. Where was Manfred? It was at times like this that the monastery needed a strong leader, someone to steer them all through these difficult times.
“Monks!” came a shout from behind him. All heads turned to see Father Eustace in the doorway. He tottered forwards and leaned on a table. His eyes took them all in.
“Monks!” he repeated.
The brothers of St Cadfan’s stared at him. He was a tall man, a scraggly man with a patchy mess of a beard which seemed to be an interesting inversion of the patchy baldness on top of his head. This was the first time many of them had seen their new abbot. It was the first time Stephen had seen him clothed. Father Eustace Pike’s habit hung on his narrow shoulders, and it appeared that Father Eustace had to constantly readjust it to stop it slipping through the neckhole and ending up with it around his ankles.
“Monks on an island!” said the abbot.
There was a long silence. Father Eustace stood with his mouth open. The monks waited.
“When there’s a whole world out there,” said Father Eustace. “A monstrous, terrifying world.” He eyed them all. “Could there be a better place to be than with monks on an island?”
There was a murmur of mild surprise and agreement from various tables around the refectory.
“Things change,” continued Father
Eustace, as his hand groped for a bread roll. “There’s always change. Change, change, change. New challenges. Challenge, change, challenge.” He bashed the bread roll on the table for emphasis. “We move on to the next phase of life. We can’t stop change. It will always happen, however much we resist.”
He dropped his gaze to the bread roll, pulled a chunk free and popped it into his mouth.
The monks watched him eat.
“Surrounded by kindness,” said Father Eustace, “life is bearable. Change is bearable.” He stared blankly into space for a moment. “We don’t need wardrobes. Fraternity, brotherhood. That’s what we need.”
Then he sat down in a chair and beamed at the other monks.
Stephen looked around at the other faces. They all reflected the same emotions that he was feeling. A release of some sort, a realisation that they all had their problems, but that they were part of a strong, spiritual community. Father Eustace Pike had broken his five week silence, but had chosen a powerful time to do it. Stephen looked at his twenty-odd brothers: Clement sniffing thoughtfully, Henry silenced, Huey brushing something from his eye that he’d refuse to admit was a tear. Stephen smiled at the scene before him. Maybe this was the dawning of a new era, where St Cadfan's would put its troubles behind it, its days of madness a thing of the past.
Manfred and Bastian peered into the gloom. The boat was several feet out and didn't seem to be coming any closer. There was no sign of Owen.
“I hope there isn't a problem,” said Manfred. “I was hoping he might have brought my pumpernickel with him.”
Bastian counted to ten in his head so that he didn't use language that was unbecoming for a monk.
“Look, is that him? Oh.”
They saw a figure totter forward in a huge plastic orange suit.
“What is that thing he’s wearing?”
“I think it’s a biohazard suit.”
Owen raised a loudhailer.
“I'm not coming any closer,” came Owen's voice. “They tell me you've got the plague here.”
“There's no plague,” called Bastian. “We're open for business as usual!”
“Yes, that's fine,” said Owen, “I'll be sure to mention the plague to any birdwatchers that come asking for trips.”
“He can't hear you,” said Manfred. “Look, he's winching across a container. I think he wants us to put the bones into it.”
“Well, all we've got is a box of bits!” said Bastian.
“Ah, we'll add a little note,” said Manfred, pulling a notebook from his habit.
“What on earth will we say?” asked Bastian.
Manfred sucked thoughtfully on a pencil.
“So, this American, wants whole skeletons, yes?”
“Yes.”
“How about this then.”
Manfred scribbled for a few minutes and handed a note to Bastian.
Please find twelve skeletons, carefully dismantled for transport.
“Who knows?” breathed Bastian. “Maybe it could work.”
They loaded the box, with the note, into the cradle on the boom arm that Owen had swung over, and gave him a wave to indicate that they had finished. Owen gave them a wave in return, tripped over the giant orange bootees that formed part of his biohazard suit and fell over the side. He bobbed in the water like a huge inflatable, angrily waving them back as they waded in to offer their assistance.
“No, get back!” he burbled, rolling in the waves. “I'm fine. No plague. Let me get back!”
Manfred and Bastian shrugged, and left Owen to scramble up the ladder on his own.
Stephen explored the still damp cellar.
“Hello-o?”
There was no sign of any demon, not even the lingering smell of his sulphur farts. Nor, at first, could he see any staircase. And why would he? There had been no staircase noted when the corpses were hauled out.
But then Stephen saw it. The staircase skulked in the darkness, blending in artfully with the furthest wall, as though it were an optical illusion, a sort of reverse trompe l’œil which made the three-dimensional stairs appear to be a flat pattern on the wall.
The stairs seemed to shimmer and twist kaleidoscopically before his eyes. He tapped the side of the torch that he carried. Clearly, he needed to get some new batteries.
Stephen decided that he'd leave his peace offerings at the top of the stairs, rather than risk a failing battery going any further. He placed the items carefully by the top step, so that Rutspud couldn't miss them if he made another visit. The book was not one from the monastery library, but one from Stephen’s own bookshelf. It somehow seemed apt. On top of it, he rested the remainder of Brother Bernard’s jelly babies, the bag folded over neatly.
Stephen regarded his gesture of Christian friendship, patted the bag of jelly babies as though bidding it farewell, and left.
Chapter 4 – The day the food ran out
“What do you think?”
Manfred looked up from his notes at the large rectangle of card in Bastian’s hands and the big letters in a variety of felt tip colours.
“’How Not To Die’?”
“It’s for my presentation tonight on how not to die.”
“I can see that.”
“Look. I’ve drawn a picture of a monk. He’s not dead. And he’s smiling.”
“Good.”
“Because I’m trying to keep it upbeat. I thought a physical presentation on boards, rather than a powerpoint, would save on using up precious petrol in the generator.”
Manfred considered Bastian’s presentation board.
“And the content of this presentation?” he asked.
“Oh, the usual,” said Bastian. “What’s safe to eat, what’s not. Basic hygiene, precautions against plague. You know, generally” – he waved his arms around vaguely – “how not to die in this time of crisis. How’s the menu planning coming on?”
The largest table in the locutory was covered in papers: old manuscripts, scraps of frantic writing and small herds of screwed up paper balls. Manfred ran a hand through his curls and flicked through the paper ruins.
“Thrown out of kilter by the discovery that the rats have eaten all our remaining potatoes.”
“So what have we got left?”
“Fat rats.”
“I don’t think the brothers are ready for a rodent-based diet.”
“The Cantonese call it jia lu or ‘super deer’. It’s considered a delicacy.”
“Yes. Well, reconsider, brother. Reconsider very, very hard.”
“Brother Stephen has provided me with some useful texts from the library,” said Manfred, and tapped a thick tome of the collected works of Flavius Josephus. “Did you know that, during the first century siege of Jerusalem, the besieged resorted to eating belts, leather straps and cooked tufts of grass?”
“Is that all?”
“And babies. But we’re out of babies.”
“And that’s the best advice history has to offer?”
“No.” Manfred shifted the Josephus aside and opened a printed volume. “From the histories of Joan of Arc, we have the siege of Orleans. Culinary delights included tree bark, shoes and rat droppings.”
Bastian thought for a minute.
“Wednesday, there was spotted dick …”
“The last of the sultanas, I swear,” said Manfred, crossing his heart. “But we are certainly going to have to get imaginative with our foodstuffs from now on. Here.”
Manfred pushed a list over to Bastian. Bastian read.
“Snails. Fair enough. Worms. Barnacles. Candles. Shoe polish? Really? Organic emulsion paint? Don’t think I could stomach that.”
“You recall yesterday’s pasta Carbonara?”
“That wasn’t really cream sauce?”
“That wasn’t really pasta either.”
Bastian held his stomach and concentrated on the list.
“Toothpaste, cough syrup and sawdust all crossed out.”
Bastian groaned. “But I had seconds
of last night’s meringue pie. This is barbaric.”
“You think I don’t know that?” said Manfred. “As prior, refectorian and Westphalian Bake-Off Champion two years running, I am appalled and ashamed at what I have had to resort to.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Manfred.”
“I don’t,” said Manfred with an uncharacteristic rancour that could only be attributed to hunger. “I’m not the one who’s failed to secure another food parcel airdrop.”
“Hey,” said Bastian. “It’s not my fault the last one rolled into the sea and was pillaged by gulls. That RAF commander was rather sniffy about our failed attempts to rescue the package. He’s clearly never been dive-bombed by the vicious Bardsey birdlife.”
“What about convincing Owen to bring us something?”
“Refuses to come over until Brother Bernard’s remains have been tested for plague. And he said that Dylan Davies has taken up position on the roof of the Ship Hotel with a rifle and will shoot any monk who tries to row back to the mainland.”
“Great. Are we even going to be safe going out for our fishing trip later?”
“It is to be hoped.”
“Stephen is going out to collect wild bird eggs later and Brother Huey has been camping out on the hills hoping to catch rabbits –”
“Catch his death of cold more like.”
“– but I am not overly optimistic,” Manfred concluded. “If we do not get some fresh food soon then we are going be very hungry indeed. But on the plus side …”
“Yes?”
“According to our Medicinale Anglicum, starvation is a good protection against the plague.”
“Right. So not a course of antibiotics, then?”
“We must work with what we have, Brother Sebastian. Here’s another cure. Drink a mixture of baby fox’s blood and urine thrice daily in a silver goblet blessed by the king.”
“And do we possess a goblet blessed or otherwise by the king?”
“We have some silver in the church. I thought that if Prince William happened to be visiting his old RAF base in Anglesey, he could do a fly-by blessing or something.”