At the end of the path lay a figure. Curled into a tight, black ball. With just a crest of distinctive white. Only it wasn’t all white. There was deep red there too.
Frère Simon threw his gardening tools to the ground and leapt forward, wading through the bushes to get there. Stomping on his precious perennials. Killing the cheerful black-eyed Susans standing in his way.
A monk, one of his brothers, was hurt. Badly hurt.
“I thought,” said Frère Simon, not looking into Gamache’s eyes, but down at the rosary in his hands. His voice was low, not above a whisper, and the Chief leaned forward to grasp each rare word. “I thought…”
Now Frère Simon did look up. The memory alone was enough to frighten him.
Gamache said nothing. He kept his face neutral, interested. But his deep brown eyes never left the monk’s.
“I thought it was Dom Philippe.”
His eyes fell to the simple cross swinging from his rosary. Then Frère Simon brought his hands up, and dropped his head and held it there, so that the cross knocked softly against the monk’s forehead. And then stopped.
“Oh, God, I thought he was dead. I thought something had happened to him.” Frère Simon’s voice was muffled. But while his words were obscured, his feelings couldn’t have been clearer.
“What did you do?” asked Gamache, softly.
His head still in his hands, the monk spoke to the floor. “I hesitated. God help me, I hesitated.”
He lifted his head to look at Gamache. His confessor. Hoping for understanding, if not absolution.
“Go on,” said Gamache, his eyes never wavering.
“I didn’t want to see. I was afraid.”
“Of course you were. Anyone would be. But you did go to him, finally,” said the Chief. “You didn’t run away.”
“No.”
“What happened?”
Now Frère Simon held on to Gamache’s eyes as though they were a rope and he was dangling from a cliff.
“I knelt and turned him a little. I thought maybe he’d fallen from the wall or the tree. I know, it’s ridiculous, but I couldn’t see how else it could’ve happened. And if he’d broken his neck I didn’t want to…”
“Oui,” said Gamache. “Go on.”
“Then I saw who it was.” The monk’s voice had changed. It was still filled with stress, with anxiety, reliving those terrible moments. But the degree had changed. “It wasn’t the abbot.”
There was clearly relief.
“It was the prior.”
And even more relief. What had started as a dreadful tragedy had ended as almost good news. Frère Simon couldn’t hide it. Or chose not to.
Still, he held the Chief’s gaze. Searching it for disapproval.
He found none. Only acceptance, that what he was hearing was almost certainly, finally, the truth.
“Was he alive?” Gamache asked.
“Oui. His eyes were open. He stared at me, and grabbed my hand. You’re right. He knew he was dying. And I knew. I couldn’t tell you how I knew, but I did. I couldn’t just leave him.”
“How long did it take?”
Frère Simon paused. It had obviously taken an eternity. Kneeling in the earth, holding the bloody hand of a dying man. A fellow monk. A man this man despised.
“I don’t know. A minute, maybe slightly more. I gave him last rites, and it calmed him a bit.”
“What are the last rites, can you repeat them for me?”
“Surely you’ve heard them?”
Gamache had heard them, and knew them. Had given them himself, swiftly, urgently, while holding one dying agent after another. But he wanted Frère Simon to say them now.
Simon closed his eyes. His right hand reached out just a little, and cupped just a little. Holding an invisible hand.
“O Lord Jesus Christ, most merciful lord of earth, we ask that you receive this child into your arms, that he might pass in safety from this crisis, as thou hast told us with infinite compassion.”
His eyes still closed, Frère Simon lifted his other hand and with his thumb he sketched a cross. On the dying monk’s forehead.
Infinite compassion, thought Gamache, looking down at the young agent, his own specter in his own arms. In the heat of the moment, Gamache hadn’t had time to give the full last rites, so he’d simply bent down and whispered, “Take this child.”
But the agent was already gone. And Gamache himself had to go.
“This is where,” the Chief said, “a dying man, if he’s able, gives his confession.”
Frère Simon was silent.
“What did he say?” Gamache asked.
“He made a noise,” said Frère Simon, as though in a trance. “Trying to clear his throat and then he said ‘homo.’”
Now Simon focused. He came back from far away. The two men stared at each other.
“Homo?” asked the Chief.
Frère Simon nodded. “You can see why I didn’t say anything. It has nothing to do with his death.”
But, thought Gamache, perhaps a lot to do with his life. The Chief considered for a moment.
“What do you think he meant?” he finally asked.
“I think we both know what he meant.”
“Was he gay? Homosexual?”
For a moment Frère Simon tried on his disapproving look, then abandoned it. They were far beyond that.
“It’s hard to explain,” said Frère Simon. “We’re two dozen men here alone. Our goal, our prayer, is to find divine love. Compassion. To be consumed by the love of God.”
“That’s the ideal,” said Gamache. “But in the meantime, you’re also human.”
The need for physical comfort was, he knew, powerful and primal and didn’t necessarily go away with a vow of chastity.
“But what we need isn’t physical love,” said Frère Simon, correctly interpreting Gamache’s thoughts, and correcting him. The monk didn’t sound at all defensive. He was simply struggling to find the right words. “I think most, if not all of us, have left that far behind. We’re not highly sexed or sexual.”
“What do you need then?”
“Kindness. Intimacy. Not sexual. But companionship. God should replace man in our affections, but the reality is, we all want a friend.”
“Is that how you feel, with the abbot?” Gamache asked the question baldly, but his voice and his manner were gentle. “I saw how you reacted when you thought he was the one hurt and dying.”
“I love him, it’s true. But I have no desire for physical relations. It’s hard to explain a love that goes so far beyond that.”
“And the prior? Did he love another?”
Frère Simon was silent. Not a mulish silence, but a contemplative one.