Book of Souls

The monks were now at afternoon work, some tending the garden and the chicken coops, others indoors in the kitchen, the pottery, or bookbinder’s shop. There weren’t many of them, fewer than a dozen, mostly older men. The young infrequently sought the monk’s life these days. The tour was winding down, and Will hadn’t yet seen what he came for. His hand shot up along with the hands of others. They all wanted the same thing, and the guide knew what was coming.

She called on him because he stood out from the crowd, tall and handsome, his eyes shining with intelligence. “I’d like to see the medieval monastery.”

The group murmured. That’s what everyone wanted.

“Yes, funny you should ask!” she joked. “I was going to point you in the right direction. It’s less than a quarter mile up that lane. Everyone wants to go there lately, not that there’s much to see. Just some ruins. But seriously, ladies and gentlemen, I understand the interest, and I encourage you to visit the site for some quiet contemplation. The spot has been marked with a small plaque.”

As the guide was answering questions, she kept staring at Will, and when she was done, she approached him and unself-consciously inspected his face.

“Thanks for the tour,” he told her.

“May I ask you something?”

He nodded.

“By any chance, are you Mr. Piper, the American who’s been in the news over all this?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She beamed. “I thought so! Would you mind if I told the abbot you’re here. I think he’ll want to meet you.”

Dom Trevor Hutchins, the Lord Abbot of Vectis Abbey was a portly, white-haired man brimming with enthusiasm. He led Will and Nancy up the gravel lane toward the crumbling medieval walls of the ancient monastery and asked to push the stroller to “give the young man a ride.”

He insisted on repeating the history that Will and Nancy had just heard about the medieval abbey being shuttered and looted by King Henry’s Reformation in 1536, the masonry dismantled stone by stone and shipped to Cowes and Yarmouth for castle-building and fortification. All that now remained were the ragged ghosts of the grand complex, low walls and foundations.

The modern abbey was built in the early twentieth century by French monks who used red bricks to revive the Benedictine tradition, choosing to build near the hallowed ground of the old abbey. The abbot himself was approaching his twenty-fifth year at Vectis, having joined as a young man fresh from a classics degree at Cambridge.

Around a bend, the rough, tumbledown walls came into view. The ruins were in a field overlooking the Solent, the south coast of England looming across the narrow stretch of sea. The pebbled walls that had survived the centuries were clipped-off facades with a few remaining cutouts where windows and arches had been. Sheep were grazing around the ruins.

“Behold ancient Vectis!” the abbot said. “Is it what you expected, Mr. Piper?”

“It’s peaceful.”

“Yes it is. We have bags of peace here.” He pointed out the walls that had belonged to the cathedral, the chapter house, and the dormitories. Farther off were scattered low remains of the medieval abbey wall.

“Where was the Library?”

“Not here. Farther on. Unsurprisingly, they appear to have tucked it away in a far corner.”

Will held Nancy ’s hand as they reached the depression in an adjacent grassy meadow, a large rectangular hollow dipping a meter below the level of the rest of the field. At the edge of the low-lying ground was a newly laid granite marker with a bronze plaque. The inscription was starkly simple: THE LIBRARY OF VECTIS-782-1297.

The abbot stood over the marker, and said, “This was your gift to the world, Mr. Piper. I’ve read all about what you did on the Internet.”

Nancy laughed at the thought of monks online.

“Oh, yes, we have a high-speed connection!” the abbot boasted.

“Not everyone thinks what I did was a gift,” he said.

“Well, it’s certainly not a curse. The truth never is. I find everything about the Library very reassuring. I can feel God’s unwavering hand at work. I feel a connection with Abbot Felix and all his predecessors who zealously protected and nurtured the great endeavor as if it were a delicate orchid that would perish if the temperature was one degree higher or lower. I’ve taken to coming here for meditation.”

“Does 2027 concern you?” Nancy asked.

“We live in the present here. Our community concerns itself with working together to praise the Lord, to celebrate the mass and to pray the Holy Scriptures. In essence, our concern, is to know Christ Jesus. The year 2027, asteroids, and all those things are not our concern.”

Will smiled at him. “If you ask me, all the fuss about the 2027 is probably for the good. The whole world’s going to be too focused on space rocks and that kind of stuff to beat up on each other. For once, we’ve got a common goal. Win or lose, my guess is it’s going to be the best seventeen years we’ve ever had.”