Book of Souls

“No!” Edgar said this so forcefully he surprised himself. He had to persuade Jean to help; he was at his wit’s end. He thought quickly-perhaps there was a way. It would violate an oath he had given himself, but what choice did he have? He blurted this out: “If you will help me, I will show you something that will, no doubt, fascinate you and greatly stimulate your mind.”

Jean raised his eyebrows. “You have stirred my interest, Edgar. What do you have?”

“A book. I have a book.”

“What book?”

He had crossed the Rubicon. He fell to the floor, opened his clothes chest, and pulled out his father’s large book. “This one.”

“Let me see!”

Edgar placed it on the desk and let Jean inspect it, watching as the serious young man leafed through the pages with increasing amazement. “The year of our Lord 1527. Yet, most of these dates are in the future, in the months to come. How can this be?”

“I have pondered this since I could first read,” Edgar said. “This book has been in my family for generations, passed from father to son. What was the future has become the present.”

Jean came across a sheath of loose parchments stuck into the pages. “And this? This letter?”

“I have not yet read it! I hastily took the pages from my father’s collection when I left England last month. I have long been told it bears on the matter. I had hoped to have the opportunity to study it in Paris, but I have not had the time or strength to do so. It is no favor to me it is in Latin. My head spins!”

Jean regarded him disapprovingly. “Your father does not know you have these?”

“It is not a theft! I borrowed the book and the letter and intend to return them. I have confessed to myself a minor sin.”

Jean was already reading the first page of the abbot’s letter, breezing through the Latin as if it were his native French. He devoured the first page and was on to the second without uttering a word. Edgar left him to his task, studying his face for a reaction, resisting the urge to plead, “What? What does it say?”

As Jean turned pages, his expression was indecipherable although Edgar felt he was watching an older, wiser man, not a fellow student. He read on without interruption for a full fifteen minutes and when the last page was returned to the bottom of the stack, a page marked with the date 9 February, 2027, he simply said, “Incredible.”

“Tell me, please.”

“You truly have not read this?”

“Truly. I beg you-enlighten me!”

“I fear it is a tale of madness or wicked fancy, Edgar. Your treasure undoubtedly belongs on the fire.”

“You are wrong, sir, I am sure. My father has told me the book is a true prophecy.”

“Let me tell you about the nonsense written by this Abbot Felix, then you can judge yourself. I will be brief because if Tempête catches us up so late, we will surely glimpse the gates of hell.”

THE NEXT MORNING, Edgar did not feel as cold and miserable as usual. He sprang out of bed warmed by the spirit of excitement and camaraderie. While Jean had remained derisive and skeptical, Edgar completely believed everything that was contained in the abbot’s letter.

Finally, he felt he understood the Cantwell family secret and the significance of his strange book. But perhaps more importantly-for a scared, lonely boy adrift in a foreign city, he now had a friend. Jean was kind and attentive and, above all, not scornful. Edgar was sick of scorn being heaped on him like manure. From his father. His brother. His tutors. This French lad was treating him with dignity, like a fellow human being.

Before he departed for the night, Edgar had beseeched Jean to keep his mind open to the possibility that the letter could be a true and factual account rather than the ravings of a lunatic monk. Edgar proposed a plan he had been harboring for some time, and, to his relief, Jean had not summarily dismissed it.

In the chapel, Edgar made eye contact with Jean across the pew and received the precious gift of another small wink. Throughout the morning, the two boys exchanged furtive glances at prayer, in the classroom and at breakfast until in the early afternoon they were finally permitted to speak to each other privately at the start of one of their infrequent recreation periods.

There were flurries of snow in the air, and a crisp wind blew through the school’s courtyard. “You’d better fetch your cloak,” Jean told him. “But be quick.”

They had only two hours for their adventure, and they would not have another opportunity for several days. Though Jean was serious and scholarly, Edgar could sense that he was enjoying the prospect of an escapade even if he thought it was folly. The two boys left the college gate and crossed the bustling and slippery rue Saint Symphorien, dodging horses and carts and piles of animal dung. They walked quickly with a determination and purpose, which they hoped would make them somehow less visible to the thieves and cutthroats who populated the neighborhood.