Fearing that one of his fellow novices might get into trouble for leaving the object where it had no right to be, he walked further down to see if he could take it away himself, before anyone else came in and noticed it.
He rubbed his eyes to clear more early morning tears, and when he opened them he could see more clearly. Too clearly.
The young man’s screams could be heard above the hammering of the toaca, above the wind, above the cries of circling birds. He screamed and screamed until someone came at last. Kind hands went round his shoulders, and someone led him away.
They had torn Father Iustin’s cassock open at the back. Someone had lashed him with ropes to the iconostasis, and someone else, a strong man, had flogged him while a third man stood near enough to catch his words, if he spoke.
‘Where have they gone?’ the third man asked. ‘You know who I am, you know there is nothing you or your friends can do to stop me. I have what I need, I just need your friends to take me to the place the relics came from. I want the bones, you see, as I imagine you have guessed in your interfering mind. Just say one word, old man, and I’ll let you rest. I mean you no harm, but I will have what I came for. I do not mean to hurt you, but it is up to you if you suffer. Just one word, a direction, a hint. The whip in my friend’s hand is a flogging whip, and he will flog you with it until you are within an inch of your life. Unless you tell me where they have gone.’
He said nothing, so they stripped him and lashed him to the iconostasis, on the gate, between an icon of the Virgin and a representation of St John the Baptist, and they put a wad of cloth between his teeth, so he could not cry out, and the man with the whip spat on his bare back. It was all done quite calmly, without moral dread or fear of consequence. Egon Aehrenthal did not have a conscience, not even a flicker of one, and he had instilled in others a sense that a conscience was a weakness to be suppressed in them, just as the monks in Putna fought against lust and greed.
The first blow came down heavily, driven by controlled anger. Iustin’s skin cracked open and a gush of blood sprayed into the cold air. Aehrenthal watched as the beating went on, watched with fascination the crack and fall of the knotted lash, the spasms of pain that rustled like fire across the monk’s body, the open wounds that started to lace his back, the blood that kept coming even when he seemed already drained.
‘Stop,’ Aehrenthal said, raising his arm. The whip halted in mid-air and was lowered. Aehrenthal reached for the soaking wad and pulled it from Father Iustin’s mouth.
‘I will stop this now,’ he said, ‘if you say just one word. A person, a place, a hint. You have suffered enough. Jesus barely withstood thirty-nine lashes. You have had a dozen.’
But all this time, though the priest’s lips moved, all that came from his mouth were the opening words of Ave Maria.
Aehrenthal rammed the wad back in the old man’s mouth. The priest would have to break soon, he thought, for he didn’t look capable of withstanding the full weight of the biblical lashing. He nodded and the whipping started again.
It went on like that for over seventy lashes, and in the end Aehrenthal knew he would get nothing from the priest, but had him lashed anyway as a symbol of something or other, he didn’t know or care what. Father Iustin died between one stroke and the next, and his back was torn to shreds, the skin gone from it and a red, bleeding mass left underneath. They left him like that and walked from the church as if they had just attended midnight prayers.
That was how the acolyte found him, like meat hanging in a butcher’s shop. A symbol of sorts, but no one could rightly say of what.
They drove south to Piatra Neamt, in the northern part of Moldavia, the main town of the Eastern Carpathians. From the town, they headed north-west for seven kilometres before turning right onto the main road from Piatra Neamt to Bicaz. A few minutes later they reached their destination, the Bistrita monastery.
Inside, they asked for another monk, Father Gavril Comaneci. They were shown into a bleak, unheated room and told to wait. Ten minutes or more passed, then a monk with a long white beard and hair growing from his ears and nostrils came in. He asked what business they had with Father Gavril, and Ilona said something long and persuasive. The monk frowned several times, then nodded and left.
More minutes passed. This time a different monk appeared. He was aged around forty and wore a black beard. His little round hat stank of fish glue, and his hands were stained with paints. Comaneci was an artist, and he was currently engaged in a complete repainting of the frescoes throughout the monastery. Interrupted in his work, he looked irritable. He had eyes with peacock-blue irises, and a look that went through anyone he fixed them on. Ilona stumbled as she tried to explain who they were and what had brought them there.
But Father Iustin’s name was enough. The moment it was spoken, Comaneci stopped Ilona and switched to English, telling them to accompany him.
As they left the unwelcoming welcome room, Ilona remembered that she still had not been able to get in touch with home. Her mobile battery had been drained, and she had left her charger behind. Father Gavril showed her to the monastery office, where the one and only telephone was kept. She rang home. She knew her parents would be worried about her. They would think she had simply disappeared, or imagine something bad had happened to her when she last went onto the mountain. Everyone knew that Aehrenthal kept several thuggish types up at the castle, and there had been cases — all unproved — of rape.
The phone went on ringing for ages. She thought it odd, knowing that someone was usually around after Christmas. Her mother spent most of her time at home anyway. A minute passed, then another. Ilona put the phone down. Puzzled, she decided to ring her grandmother, who lived two streets away. She lifted the receiver again and dialled the local code, 265, then her grandmother’s number. The old woman (in fact, she was in her late fifties) had lived alone since her husband Petrica passed away five years earlier.
This time someone answered the phone within seconds. But it wasn’t her grandmother.
‘Hello?’ said Ilona. ‘Who is this?’
‘Ilona? Is that you, Ilona?’
‘Yes, who—?’
‘This is Cosmina Bratianu, dear. Your gran’s next-door neighbour. Were you trying to get her?’
‘Is something wrong with her? Don’t say she’s been taken ill. She was fine when I saw her last—’
‘It’s not that, dear. It’s not illness, but…she’s staying with your other grandparents. I’m looking after her house. Ilona…’
Ilona noticed that the woman’s voice was shaking. She had known her all her life, not well, but well enough. She didn’t sound right at all.
‘What’s all this about?’ she asked.
‘Ilona…you must brace yourself. I have very bad news for you…’
Later, when Ilona had been put to bed in the infirmary to be treated for shock, and a doctor had been sent for from Piatra Neamt, Gavril took Ethan and Sarah to the studio where he kept his materials and worked on anything portable that needed his attention. He found them seats and put them round a trestle table covered in a paint-smeared tarpaulin.
A novice brought glasses and a bottle of vinars, a brandy made in the monastery and popular throughout Moldavia. Sarah and Ethan were still deeply shocked by Ilona’s news. Almost as shocking as the deaths was the radio news that no one in Sancraiu would tell the police who had been responsible for the killings. Aehrenthal had walked away from yet more deaths, as a man walks from a field where he has shot birds all day.