Then the voice, and the hand, stopped.
“The word ‘neume’ comes from the Greek for ‘breath.’ The monks who first wrote down the chants believed that the deeper we breathe the more we draw God into ourselves. And there’s no deeper breath than when we’re singing. Have you ever noticed that the deeper you breathe, the calmer you get?” the monk asked.
“I have. As have Hindus and Buddhists and pagans for millennia.”
“Exactly. Every culture, every spiritual belief, has some form of chanting, or meditation. And at their core is the breath.”
“So where do neumes come in?” Gamache asked. He was leaning toward the Dominican, holding his large hands together for warmth.
“The first plainchants were learned orally. But then, around the tenth century a monk decided to write them down. But to do that he needed to invent a way of writing music.”
“Neumes,” said the Chief, and the monk nodded.
“For three centuries, generations of monks wrote down all the Gregorian chants. To preserve them.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Gamache. “Many monasteries were given Books of Chants.”
“How’d you know?”
“They have one here. Apparently not one of the more remarkable.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I don’t,” said Gamache. “The abbot told me. He says most are illuminated editions. Very fine. But he suspects since the Gilbertines were a minor order and very poor, they ended up with the tenth-century equivalent of a factory second.”
“Have you seen the book?”
Frère Sébastien leaned toward Gamache. The Chief Inspector opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again and examined the Dominican.
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Gamache finally said. “Not to find the Gilbertines, but to find their book.”
“Have you seen it?” Frère Sébastien repeated.
“Oui. I held it.” There was no use denying it. The book wasn’t exactly a secret.
“My God,” Frère Sébastien exhaled. “Dear God.” He shook his head. “Can you show me? I’ve been looking all over for it.”
“All over the monastery?”
“All over the world.”
The Dominican rose and whacked the dirt and twigs off his white robes.
Gamache also got up. “Why didn’t you ask the abbot or any of the monks?”
“I thought they’d probably hidden it.”
“Well, they didn’t. It normally sits on the lecturn in the Blessed Chapel, for all the monks to consult.”
“I didn’t see it there.”
“That’s because one of the monks has been keeping it with him. Studying the chants.”
As they talked they’d made their way back to the monastery, and stopped in front of the thick wooden door. Gamache knocked and after a moment they heard the bolt slide back and the key turn in the lock. They stepped in. After the chill outside, the abbey felt almost warm. The Dominican was halfway down the hall before Gamache called him back.
“Frère Sébastien?”
The monk stopped and turned, impatient.
Gamache pointed to Frère Luc, standing in the porter’s room.
“What is it?” And then Frère Sébastien realized what Gamache was telling him. The Dominican began walking back, quickly at first, his pace slowing as he got closer to the porter’s room.
Frère Sébastien seemed reluctant to take that last step. For fear, perhaps, of disappointment, Gamache thought. Or perhaps he realized he didn’t really want the search to end. Because then what would he do?
If the mystery was solved, what would be his purpose?
Frère Sébastien stopped at the door to the porter’s room.
“Would you mind, mon frère,” the Dominican asked, suddenly formal, almost grave, “if I looked at your Book of Chants?”
It was not, Gamache knew, how the Inquisition of the past would have handled it. They’d have simply taken the book, and probably burned the young monk who had it in his possession.
Frère Luc stepped aside.
And the hound of the Lord took the last few steps in a journey that had begun hundreds of years and thousands of miles earlier. By brothers long dead.
He stepped into the dreary little room and looked at the large, plain bound book on the desk. His hand hovered over the cover and then he opened it and took a deep breath in.
Then a deep breath out.
A long, slow sigh.
“This is it.”
“How do you know?” Gamache asked.
“Because of this.” The monk picked up the book and held it in his arms.
Gamache put on his reading glasses and leaned over. Frère Sébastien was pointing to the very first word on the very first page. Above it was a neume. But where the finger was there was nothing, except a dot.
“That?” asked Gamache, also pointing. “That dot?”
“That dot,” said Frère Sébastien. There was a look of awe, of astonishment on his face. “This is it. The very first book of Gregorian chant. And this,” he lifted his finger a fraction, “is the very first musical note. It must’ve somehow come into the possession of Gilbert of Sempringham, in the twelfth century,” said the Dominican, speaking to the page and not the men around him. “Maybe as a gift, a thank-you from the Church, for his loyalty to Thomas à Becket. But Gilbert couldn’t have known how valuable it was. No one would, at the time. They couldn’t have known it was unique. Or would become unique.”
“But what makes it unique?” asked Gamache.
“That dot. It’s not a dot.”
“What is it?” It looked like a dot to Gamache. He’d rarely felt so stupid as he had since arriving in Saint-Gilbert.
“It’s the key.” Both men looked at the young portier who’d just spoken. “The starting point.”
“You knew?” Frère Sébastien asked Frère Luc.
“Not at first,” admitted Luc. “I just knew the chants here are different than any I’d ever heard or sung. But I didn’t know why. Then Frère Mathieu told me.”
“Did he know this book is priceless?” asked the Dominican.
“I don’t think he thought in those terms. But I think he knew it was unique. He knew enough about Gregorian chant to realize none of the others, in all the literature and collections, had that dot. And he knew what it meant.”
“What does it mean?” asked Gamache.
“That dot is the musical Rosetta stone,” said Frère Sébastien, then he turned to Luc. “You called it the key and that’s exactly what it is. All the other Gregorian chants are close. It’s like getting to this monastery but not being able to get in the door. The best you can do is wander around the outside. Close. But not quite there. This,” he nodded down at the page, “is the key that unlocks the door that gets us inside the chants. That gets us inside the minds and the voices of the earliest of monks. With this, we know what the original chants really sounded like. What the voice of God really sounds like.”