The Rule of Sebastian Read online

  “God must have had a hand in bringing him to us,” Brother George said. “Why else would he have come here? I do hope he makes it.”

  “He’s young and strong looking,” Brother Jerome said. “That’s his best chance for a full recovery.”

  “That and prayer,” Brother Hubert said.

  “There’s still the question of where he came from,” Brother Eusebius said.

  “Maybe he’s from Monfrere,” Brother Lucien said. “A villager seeking our divine help.”

  Sebastian shook his head. “Monfrere has only one hundred residents. We’d recognize him if he came from there. He’s a stranger. A young man in search of something.”

  “You already said that,” Brother Lucien said with his usual sneering tone. “Searching for what?”

  “I have no idea,” Sebastian murmured.

  “Desperate men resort to desperate actions,” Brother Eusebius said.

  “You think he’s a criminal?” Brother Rodel’s dark eyes grew wide. “He’s come here to escape prosecution. That’s why he risked his life to reach us. He seeks asylum.”

  “A criminal?” Brother George’s jaw dropped.

  When they’d undressed him, Sebastian had noted that no tattoos marked his flesh, unusual for a young man of his generation. If he were a criminal, the way Brother Rodel worried—the way Sebastian had also considered—he’d most likely have been branded as a member of the Trinitarios or a dozen other street gangs Sebastian knew to exist. His hair was not too long, not too short, and he had a heart-cut diamond earring piercing his left earlobe. Sebastian doubted he was AWOL from the military. The closest military post was in Colorado Springs, three hundred miles away. And he was circumcised, which meant he’d most likely been born in the United States.

  “Shouldn’t we inform the police?” Brother Micah said.

  “No need to notify the authorities,” Father Paolo said with a deepening of his voice. “If he has come for asylum, St. Benedict instructs that we provide him with comfort and protection, regardless of what he’s done. All guests who present themselves to the abbey are to be welcomed as Christ.”

  “Never in the near twenty years that I’ve lived at Mt. Ouray has anyone visited the abbey in the dead of winter,” Brother Hubert said. “It’s impossible.”

  “Whatever brought him here, he not only wanted to find us, but he needed to find us,” Brother Eusebius said. “Determination and God’s helping hand allowed him to travel this far and survive.”

  “Do you think someone dropped him off in a snowmobile?” Brother George darted his eyes from one brother to the next. “Maybe someone else is out there lost?”

  “It’s unlikely he has any companions,” Sebastian said. “Nonetheless, even a snowmobile or ATV would’ve proved near impossible in this weather.”

  Brother Micah shook his head. “Unless… Unless….”

  “Unless what, Brother Micah?” Brother Eusebius said.

  Brother Micah flushed. “Oh, never mind any of that. I’m thinking of silly legends.”

  “He might die. We have to accept that,” Brother Lucien added from alongside the abbot, spewing his English drawl with a glorified emphasis, which Sebastian noticed he did whenever he wished the brothers to judge his intelligence above anyone else’s. Twenty-five years in the United States had probably taught him that Americans stereotyped the British by their accents as brighter than average.

  “Praise God, he survives.” Brother George made the sign of the cross with marked fastidiousness. “How horrible it would be if he’d traveled this far only to die in our very own infirmary.”

  “He will not die,” Brother Giles said, yanking on his beard. “I have a feeling in my old bones he’ll make it. God has not brought him to us without a reason. He will survive and live here among us. He will become a brother.”

  Brother Giles’s optimism silenced the brothers. Many trembled in anticipation, and some, Sebastian suspected, with uncertainty. Brother Eusebius’s shoulders rose to his ears. Brother George rubbed his hands, mirroring Bother Giles’s childlike expectation. Casey gazed toward the stranger, dreamlike, lost.

  “Do you think he might really want to become a brother?” Brother Micah asked.

  A soft, peculiar grin formed on the side of Father Paolo’s face. “We’re jumping to conclusions,” he said. “Before we have him profess, if and when he awakens, we must learn what his intentions are for coming here.”

  “I hope he’s not a criminal,” Brother George said. “That would be horrible.”

  “He’s a mystery, indeed.” Sebastian surprised himself that his words had come out as a whisper rather than remain inside his mind as the mere reflection he’d intended.

  Casey jerked his head to Sebastian. He caught the apprehension in the young postulant’s chestnut eyes. For some reason, Sebastian believed Casey needed assurance—the way Brother Micah often did. He shook himself from his reverie, smiled, and gave him one of his stealthy winks. Casey flushed with a smile and spun back to the stranger.

  Imitating a mother goose gathering her goslings with her wings, Father Paolo ushered the brothers toward the doorway. “Let’s give the patient some peace and quiet,” he said. “We’ll have Brother Jerome watch after him, with Brother Rodel assisting. Come along. We can ask God to have mercy on the stranger while we fulfill our responsibilities to the abbey. Make sure you stay clear of the infirmary. No wandering over to sneak a peek. Curiosity will hinder your duties and the stranger’s recovery. Remember our mission, Opus Dei.”

  The brothers shuffled for the corridor, glimpsing over their shoulders at the unconscious figure with wonder and dejection pinned in their eyes. Father Paolo held Sebastian back and waited for the others to fade away. “Are you certain you have no idea where this man might have come from, Brother Sebastian?”

  “I’m afraid I am,” he said. “The snow had covered his tracks, and I couldn’t tell which direction he might have traveled from.”

  The recessed lighting glinted off Father Paolo’s wire-framed glasses. “Very odd. Very odd.”

  Sebastian was glad to take leave of the abbot. While walking to his winter workstation, he pondered more about the young man lying unconscious in the infirmary. Brother George had been right.

  The stranger seemed to have fallen from Heaven.

  Chapter Two

  TUCKED in a corner of the sacristy, Sebastian and Brother Eusebius crafted rosaries from coffee beans, which they sold in the abbey gift shop to summertime tourists and retreatants. He no longer grumbled about the absence of windows. The abbot believed they’d focus more on their task without the outside world stealing their concentration. Four blank walls surrounded them. Two of the sacristy’s walls faced the corridors, one the kitchen pantry, and another one abutted the abbot’s private office.

  Although the brothers were permitted to discuss pertinent work-related issues during their working hours, the abbot frowned upon unnecessary speech. Biting his bottom lip, Sebastian crafted the rosary he’d started during the morning work period. He reached into a bucket full of shellacked and drilled coffee beans, and with a pair of needle-nose pliers, he placed a bean on the pin and curled the clasp ninety degrees, securing it to the previous s-clasp. Next he rolled the pin to meet the head of the adjoining bean. He repeated these steps several more times for the Hail Marys until he reached the centerpiece, Hail Holy Queen.

  Using light pressure, he leveraged a bean onto the Hail Holy Queen, making sure not to snap the bean (a bucket nearby was half-full of fractured coffee beans), and fastened it to the silver s-clasp. Bead by bead, he worked his way toward the cross attaching the First Mystery, the Glory Be, and two Hail Marys. At that point, his fingers ached. He rested his hands in his lap. Despite the abbot’s wishes, the urge to speak overcame him. He cleared his throat.

  “Do you think he’s doing well?” He did not need to elucidate who he’d meant by “he,” for he suspected the stranger resided in the forefront of each one of the monks’ minds, Brothe
r Eusebius included. Certainly Brother Eusebius would have thoughts on the matter. An educated man with a doctorate in theology from the Catholic University in Washington, DC, he’d always expressed a keen understanding of human nature.

  Sebastian returned to the rosary, twisting an s-clasp with the pliers onto the last of the Hail Marys, and waited for Brother Eusebius’s thoughtful reply. He appreciated the gentle clink of the beans and silver wire in his hands in the ensuing silence.

  “I think he’ll survive,” Brother Eusebius finally said, his downturned eyes focused on his lap, where he clasped a Hail Mary onto the rosary he’d been working on since yesterday.

  “Does his presence bother you, Brother Eusebius?” The way it did himself, Sebastian wanted to add.

  “Yes,” he said without pretense. “A little.”

  “It is odd how he came here to us.”

  Brother Eusebius repositioned the rosary he was working on across his lap, pliers in left hand. “I suppose we all ended up at the abbey under unusual circumstances.”

  Sebastian toyed with the notion of asking Brother Eusebius what “unusual circumstances” had brought him to the abbey. They’d worked shoulder to shoulder for two years, but he knew little about the middle-aged monk other than what Brother Hubert had told him. He had come from a small town in Georgia, had converted to Catholicism when he was a teenager, and had moved to Washington to pursue his degree. What unknown tales might a learned convert hold? Enough that he’d sought penance by joining the Trappists?

  Sebastian could not deny that he’d left his own unmentionables behind. Turning his back on his hometown of Philadelphia, he’d come to the abbey searching for escape too. Oh, of course, Center City sparkled with a gem’s brilliance, as do most of America’s downtowns. Skyscrapers shimmered, the downtown streets, impressively clean, glittered. But beyond the soaring steel and white sidewalks, decaying neighborhoods radiated outward in far-flung indifference. The ribs of a hand fan run over by a truck.

  Even city activists with heartfelt intentions had discarded hope. “I realize that it’s a lost cause,” one community leader had told him after a youth gathering he’d organized at Penn Park had left two teens dead and four wounded in a shoot-out. “I brought them together to show them peace and unity, but didn’t realize they’re incapable of even playing together without the slightest disagreement evolving into bloodshed.” The man had shaken his head, his eyes pinned toward the Delaware River and his back to the city and all its nonsensical, adolescent violence.

  For Sebastian, it was the west that had beckoned him. Coming to Colorado meant no more wishing or trying. No more facing the horrible reality of a life fouled by urban decay and chaos, a bureaucratic slow burn that had left his life and so many others shattered. Much like the coffee beans in the reject bucket.

  He prayed for Philadelphia, for its future. What did it matter? Many great cities throughout history had fallen to ruin. Let Phoenix, San Diego, Dallas, and Las Vegas rise as the new urban centers. He was glad to rid himself of the east coast.

  Sebastian took refuge among the men at Mt. Ouray, where, despite their quirks, they got along well. Good Samaritans, most of them, the way Luke’s parable described honest, decent men. No fear of being shot or killed here, he chuckled to himself, attaching another coffee bean with a delicate jingle of the silver wire. If only life could be fastened as smartly as a handmade rosary, he mused.

  He still figured a crushing past had brought the stranger to them. A desperate man, like Sebastian, like the others, like perhaps even the august Brother Eusebius, seeking refuge from the world’s ambiguity and violence. With nowhere else to go, the stranger had faced the blizzard to reach their grounds, only to collapse a mere fifty yards from their snow-covered doorstep.

  So young, Sebastian realized. He’d seen it before. Defeated by life before a chance to experience any of it, in turn to become a wrecking machine. So young and misguided. This one, however, who had struggled to reach their sanctuary, might harbor some fraction of hope.

  Clinking of silver wires and rustling of coffee beans blanketed the resulting silence. Sebastian pinched a bean he’d wanted to toss into the dud bucket due to its odd shape. Then, deciding to use the oblong coffee bean as the Our Father bead after all, he said, “Maybe we’re making too much of our guest.”

  “I pray that he lives and that we may learn why he’s come.” Brother Eusebius fixed his eyes on his work. “Prayer can often be the only solace in a world of riddles.”

  The tone of Brother Eusebius’s voice lacked its usual rich clarity that afternoon. Sebastian wondered if he had more qualms about their guest than he had led Sebastian to believe. He took the cue from Brother Eusebius, attached a cross to the rosary, and remained quiet for the remainder of the work period.

  Later, at dinnertime, the brothers gathering in the dining hall appeared likewise pensive. The only missing brothers were Brother Jerome, who ate his meal in the infirmary while watching over the stranger, and the eldest brother, Brother Augustine, who could no longer leave his cell without assistance. Brother George had already washed and fed him. Each brother stood by his wooden chair (except for Brother Giles, who remained in his wheelchair), chanting the responses to Father Paolo’s Latin prayer.

  They sat after the abbot closed the Bible and crossed himself, and ate in silence, as the Trappist order demanded. Sebastian had grown used to the fleshless meal of tomato soup, bread, cheese, and lentil casserole that had been a part of the Trappist diet for centuries. He had lost twenty-two pounds since entering the abbey, last time he checked. A good thing, he figured. Before leaving Pennsylvania, he’d resented his expanding paunch.

  With still no information coming from the infirmary, the brothers ate slower and more ponderously than usual. The clink of dinnerware, the clearing of a throat accompanied the snap and hiss from the fireplace at the end of the dining hall.

  Sebastian glanced at the brothers. Their darting eyes expressed a thousand thoughts and worries. “I wonder if he’s doing well,” Brother George’s dark, round eyes asked. And Brother Rodel’s expression held onto the fear that the stranger lying in their infirmary might be a criminal.

  Even after the passing of dinner and Vespers, the infirmary remained closed and silent. The monks grew restless. By Compline, Sebastian noticed their chanting had become less audible. Finally, just before everyone took to their separate cells for Retire, Brother Jerome emerged from the infirmary to give word that no change had come over the stranger.

  Father Paolo instructed Brother Jerome to remain in the infirmary through the night to guard the stranger’s well-being. The other monks closed their cell doors with envy in their eyes. They wanted the young man to recover, but they also craved to stand over his bed and gaze at him, as if he were a blessed icon.

  Sebastian slept little, spending most the night on his back, piecing together the puzzle of the stranger. Why did the stranger’s mystifying arrival bother him? Sebastian yearned for his awakening so that he might release his secrets. Yet deep inside he also wanted to keep them forever sealed.

  The following morning, the Grand Silence irked him more than usual. The other brothers had tossed and turned most of the night too, by the looks of their frazzled and drawn faces. All through Vigils and lectio divina, he figured they harbored the same unsaid question as he: Had their stranger survived the night?

  Lumbering even more slowly, they lined up in the kitchen to plate their breakfasts of corn mash, fried potatoes, and scrambled Egg Beaters, suppressing yawns and scratching at their eyes. Brother George had taken Brother Jerome his breakfast tray, but once he’d returned to the kitchen, he shrugged with a light smile. The stranger still breathed, but there had been no change.

  Brother Micah, the abbey’s cellarer, made sure to keep the breakfast bins full. No bacon or ham to go with Sebastian’s scrambled eggs. Delores, the abbey’s St. Bernard and the only female within fifteen miles, nudged her cold, wet snout at Sebastian’s hand while he served himself.
He gave her a bit of scrambled egg and patted her head. She trotted over to Brother Giles, one of the few brothers who indulged the old girl, and he fed her corn mash from the tray balanced on his lap.

  In the deadened silence and under the stark fluorescent lights, each one of the brothers’ peculiarities stood out. Sebastian tolerated his fellow monks as best he could, following Christ’s instruction to love all mankind like brothers, to embrace them with open hearts, regardless of their flaws. Brother George, suffering from pyrophobia, flinched from the warming flames under the serving bins when he served himself potatoes and, once again, knocked Sebastian’s tray, spilling his corn mash onto the tiled floor. Delores was happy to clean up. Brother Micah, dish towel forever clenched in his left hand, glowered at shaky Brother George.

  As always, Casey brushed against him while serving himself. Little Sebastian minded that. Many times Casey served Sebastian first, like now. Casey spread cream cheese on Sebastian’s blueberry muffin and grabbed his bread from the toaster, as if worried Sebastian might burn his fingers. Casey never poured himself a cup of steaming black coffee without topping off Sebastian’s. Sebastian cared little for Brother Micah’s disapproving glares.

  Sebastian carried his loaded tray to the cloister, where he reclined on the floor by the warm, buzzing radiators and gazed outside at the garden. He couldn’t see much in winter at five thirty in the morning, but he enjoyed the silent mornings, imagining May, when the tulips Brother Hubert had planted would bloom in radiant colors of yellow, red, and orange, and the lilac shrubs would blossom with purple buds.

  Casey strolled past him with his tray, the echoing click of his sandals against the terracotta tiles filling the stillness. He claimed a spot catty-corner to Sebastian, where two juniper shrubs hidden behind snow drifts pushed against the window, the same spot he always took whenever Sebastian ate breakfast by the garden.