But Will wasn’t here. Tess was. And she was grinning absurdly to herself.
A direct, respectful approach was surely best. “Brothers, I arrived here through the caverns. I know what made them, and I want to know more. What can you teach me about the giant serpent below you?” she said.
“Ha ha!” Frai Moldi burst out, but the rest of the room fell into a silence—not angry or hostile so much as cautious. Frai Lorenzi scrutinized her face.
Tess tried again: “Clearly it’s a secret you keep, and I respect that. I found the creature on my own, though, following sinkholes it made. I only want to learn more about it—you surely understand that, and you must know more than anyone else.”
“Wait, what?” Moldi looked around wildly at his brethren. The novices seemed equally confused, but the older monks watched Frai Lorenzi as if waiting for instructions.
The archivist looked pained. “The novices haven’t earned this knowledge yet,” he said, flashing Tess a rueful smile. At his sign, the new recruits were led out—along with Moldi, who must’ve been too junior or too irresponsible. He did not submit graciously but had to be pulled along, bumping into lecterns and stools. He stared at Frai Lorenzi all the way out.
“We call it Santi Prudia’s Sign,” said Frai Lorenzi while Moldi was being ushered to the door. “It returns at irregular intervals, bringing tremors with it—”
“Whoa, hold on, no,” said Moldi. He sat blocking the door and refused to budge a step farther. His escort tugged Moldi’s arm but didn’t quite dare to drag him. “You said Santi Prudia’s Sign was the earth stretching itself. Nothing to be alarmed about.”
“It is, indeed, nothing to be alarmed about,” said Frai Lorenzi calmly.
“The devil it’s not!” cried Moldi, jerking his arm out of the other monk’s grasp. All around the scriptorium, his brethren kissed knuckles against evil. “A serpent that makes earthquakes and sinkholes? When were you going to tell me about this?”
“Once you’d proved yourself worthy,” said Frai Lorenzi. “I had every confidence that you’d get there eventually.”
Moldi leaped up and dodged his lunging escort, who fell into a bookcase. “What’s it doing down there? What does it eat? What does it want?” Each question raised his voice half an octave.
“We’ll talk about this later, when you’re calm,” said the head archivist.
Several more monks tried to herd Moldi out. Drunk and scrawny though he was, he’d been taught to fight once upon a time, and was surprisingly nimble. Moldi knocked one brother to the ground, dodged three more, and somehow ended up on top of the lecterns, leaping from desk to desk, scattering piles of manuscript pages. Parchments flew like leaves in a gale; monks scrambled to pick them up.
Was he upset by the serpent or trying to upset everyone else? Tess couldn’t quite tell.
Frai Moldi had just decided to lift his robes and waggle his bare buttocks at the room (answering Tess’s unasked question) when the doors opened and the abbot, Pater Livian, arrived on the arms of two priors. The scriptorium went silent; even Moldi froze mid-waggle, his face falling. Pater Livian, antique as he was, took in the room at a glance—parchments, chaos, buttocks, and all—and said quietly, “Frai Lorenzi, a word, if you please.”
Frai Lorenzi had the wherewithal to first instruct one of the junior monks to see to their guest, and Tess, to her dismay, was led back to her cell and bid good night.
* * *
The matins bell woke her—indeed, there was no sleeping through it—and she got up only to find her door locked. She banged and shouted to no avail, and so she went back to bed in hopes that maybe this was a dream and things would be different when she woke up.
Breakfast woke her the second time, a tray under her door. Tess was forced to admit that she was locked in and had no notion why.
The abbot visited her at noon, his priors looming behind him, and explained that Santi Prudia’s Sign was a holy mystery, and therefore Tess could not be allowed to leave. She could, however, join the order, and once she’d earned enough seniority—
She closed the door in his face—maybe not her wisest move, as it was locked again immediately. Tess threw herself onto her cot and stayed there all day. The window, though paneless, was too narrow to squeeze out of.
She was startled awake by Frai Lorenzi sitting on the foot of her cot. He carried a roll of parchments under one arm and was wearing spectacles. The light through the window had turned orange; it was nearly sunset. Tess sat stiffly, side aching, and tried to shake off her grogginess.
“Forgive me for waking you, Brother Jacomo,” said Frai Lorenzi. “But I need your help, and I believe you need mine.”
“I can’t join your order,” said Tess, ready to explain why, if it would get her out of there.
The creases in his forehead deepened. “Well, you could, if you wished, but I disagree with our abbot that witnessing Santi Prudia’s Sign means the choice is made for you.” Frai Lorenzi lowered his voice, as if Pater Livian might overhear. “Our mandate is to conserve and interpret knowledge, not conceal it. Why shouldn’t the world learn of the wonder beneath our feet? Are we alone worthy of glimpsing Heaven’s majesty? I can’t accept that.
“If you don’t feel called, though, you mustn’t be forced to stay. You and I both know you’re no seminarian.” He smiled a little at her discomfiture. “No more pretending, Jacomo. My cousin Bastien was never prior. He’s the head archivist. Runs in the family.”
Frai Lorenzi pulled a complicated key out of his pouch and laid it on the cot between them. “This opens every lock in this monastery. The front gate, obviously, will be guarded, but there’s the orchard gate, where we load cider barrels, or a sally port at the end of the chapel, in case of fire. There are several others; you’ll find your way.” He transferred the roll of parchment to his hands, tightening it nervously. “Leave the key in the shrine. I’ll find it.”
“Thank you,” said Tess dubiously. “But why help me?”
“Because there’s someone else I can’t seem to help,” said Frai Lorenzi sadly. Glare on his spectacles obscured his eyes as he unrolled the parchments upon the thin coverlet. They were pages excised from books, all in the same hand (left-handed, Tess noted). At first she thought he wanted her to read them, but the pages were from different texts and he flipped them too quickly.
The margins were alive with innumerable eccentric drawings. “Look at this one,” he said, pointing to a dog wearing a bishop’s miter. Tess glanced at the old archivist’s face, trying to understand if he meant her to be appalled or appreciative. His expression remained neutral, but his eyes gleamed when he showed her Frai Moldi’s drawing of a battle between armies of crabs and frogs. Tess decided he admired these drawings, even if he was too proper to say so.
There was a nun laying eggs, a fish-headed baronet, a recognizable Pater Livian picking fruit from what could only be described as a bollocks tree. They were terrible and hilarious, and they made something ache in Tess’s heart.
The old librarian pinched his dry lips together. “At first I made him redo everything. When that didn’t deter him, I showed his scribbles to the abbot, who locked him in the cellar hole. Moldi never seemed to care, but eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I stopped tattling, stopped pulling pages. There are penis-demons, arse-bagpipes, every outrageous thing he could devise, scattered throughout the library for the edification of future scholars, Heaven help them.”
“So…you want him to stop?” asked Tess, trying to understand.