“Right,” Neil said, looking through the pages. It would be a relief to get back to the monk from Rouen.
“Ah, and there is one more thing,” Professor Piot said. “Something came for you at the office address.” Professor Piot dug through his briefcase, which was filled with books and papers and chunks of masonry he’d found at the site. “Here,” he said, handing Neil an envelope addressed in round handwriting with the 1’s made European-style, like upside-down V’s. It was stamped with Albergue Municipal de Peregrinos, and the name of a town in Spain as the return address.
“Who’s it from?” Neil said.
“J’en ai aucune idée,” Professor Piot said, with a smile that Neil didn’t understand until he turned over the envelope and saw Thanks also for nice coffees at station, M, written across the back as if it had been an afterthought.
“Wow, oh my gosh, wow, thanks,” Neil said. He held the envelope by the edges, not caring that Professor Piot was sort of chuckling as he ground out his cigarette and arranged some pieces of gargoyle in his briefcase until he could get it to close.
“If you see Beth, tell her I have gotten hold of some early drawings of the clocherie,” he said.
“I will,” Neil said.
Professor Piot said good-bye. Neil tucked the script key into his backpack and opened the envelope.
A sheet of paper was wrapped around a small stack of euro notes. The letter started out in blue, then there were several blots of ink and the writing became purple. Neil read it, then read it again. Some of the spelling was unusual, and she seemed to have picked up a little French.
Hello my dear Neil. I am writhing to You from the road which lots of other pelerins are on. Funny to say I am pelerin too, on the Way of Saint Jack just like You describe. Aktualy I am not taking this bus for Vilnius like we said, reason is long and very complicated histoire. You are telling to me about people of old times, remember? How they are going to Saint Jack always with so much problems in life? Aktualy I think still it is like this, people carrying weigths upon them, so much heavy and penitent things. And when You tell how this body comes on the beach, with Saint Jack looking like not even deathed and covered with scalped shells of all ocean and these shells are putting back his skin like the life, then I am thinking really to my friend, how I am making cinders with her when in fact it is important for her to be completed when deathed. So I will take her to End of the Earth where these pelerin nuns say Saint Jack, he has miracle for all (even those not quite believing!) But I writ You now for one other reason, is this: You are saying me name of Your father, yes? You know how I am knowing already his name, RICHARD? My mother isn’t calling him this. I know RICHARD BEART because this name my mother is all the time carrying, it is close on her heart. I do not meet Your father but maybe for him it is same? They are for each other? Do not worry so much for why, only please tell to father to call my mother for saying hello. I think she is really waiting him all life. Okay, I am going to tell You so long. Thanks also for kind help of euros 60.00. I have some small job now so I inclose the return of these euros here.
Sincerely regards,
Your Magdalena
There was something scratched out at the bottom, as if she’d started to write a P.S., then changed her mind. Neil read it a third time. It was pretty crazy of her to go off on the pilgrimage like that, and he didn’t know what she meant about his father’s name, or what it was her mother was carrying. But she’d asked him to tell his dad to call her mom, and that, at least, was clear.
Neil took out his phone to call his father, then remembered what he’d decided after he left Dijana’s apartment. He had to keep his dad from finding out about the shoes.
Neil put his phone away and read the letter again. It was interesting how much pilgrim vocabulary Magdalena had picked up—calling the pilgrimage the Way of Saint Jacques and using words like penitent. An example of how the old customs were passed on from pilgrim to pilgrim; Neil hoped it was a sign that Magdalena was traveling with people who knew what they were doing. He skimmed past the confusing parts. Something struck him about the particular words she’d used: people carrying weigths upon them . . . Neil tried to remember exactly what they’d been talking about at the train station when she’d asked about his research. He had mentioned the woman with the baby, the criminal priests and chronic adulterers. So much heavy and penitent things. Neil took out the script key from Professor Piot. He thought of the little tails on the monk’s letters, the way the strokes of the pen seemed to trail off the page. He looked back at the letter. There was the part about Magdalena’s mother, something she was all the time carrying, something close on her heart. Neil remembered what Professor Piot had said about the monk’s handwriting: Perhaps his arm was tired. Neil shoved Magdalena’s letter into his notebook, grabbed his backpack, and hurried into the archives.
He read Magdalena’s letter a few more times while he waited for the monk’s file, telling himself that the idea was crazy, he shouldn’t get too worked up. But when the carton from the Saint-Jean-d’Angély archives came and he opened the packet with the monk’s eight vellum pages again, Neil felt suddenly weightless as the bottom dropped out of time. For a moment he had the sense that he was looking straight through the monk’s parchment and into an afternoon at the Saint-Jean-d’Angély abbey seven hundred years ago. He could see the monk dip the sharpened quill of a goose feather into ink, trying to hold his hand steady as a heavy chain around his wrist dragged each stroke downward. The precise balance of a hollow quill against parchment took decades to achieve; Neil could see the monk struggling to keep his movements even, to recalibrate the pressure of his pen against the page, his wrists bound by by iron shackles, the kind a heretic would be required to wear as he walked toward Santiago de Compostela, dragging his chains.