Now the choir was festively chanting the “Adiuva me,” whose bright a swelled happily through the church, and even the u did not seem grim as that to “sederunt,” but full of holy vigor. The monks and the novices sang, as the rule of chant requires, with body erect, throat free, head looking up, the book almost at shoulder height so they could read without having to lower their heads and thus causing the breath to come from the chest with less force. But it was still night, and though the trumpets of rejoicing blared, the haze of sleep trapped many of the singers, who, lost perhaps in the production of a long note, trusting the very wave of the chant, nodded at times, drawn by sleepiness. Then the wakers, even in that situation, explored the faces with a light, one by one, to bring them back to wakefulness of body and of soul.
So it was a waker who first noticed Malachi sway in a curious fashion, as if he had suddenly plunged back into the Cimmerian fog of a sleep that he had probably not enjoyed during the night. The waker went over to him with the lamp, illuminating his face and so attracting my attention. The librarian had no reaction. The man touched him, and Malachi slumped forward heavily. The waker barely had time to catch him before he fell.
The chanting slowed down, the voices died, there was brief bewilderment. William had jumped immediately from his seat and rushed to the place where Pacificus of Tivoli and the waker were now laying Malachi on the ground, unconscious.
We reached them almost at the same time as the abbot, and in the light of the lamp we saw the poor man’s face. I have already described Malachi’s countenance, but that night, in that glow, it was the very image of death: the sharp nose, the hollow eyes, the sunken temples, the white, wrinkled ears with lobes turned outward, the skin of the face now rigid, taut, and dry; the color of the cheeks yellowish and suffused with a dark shadow. The eyes were still open and a labored breathing escaped those parched lips. He opened his mouth, and as I stooped behind William, who had bent over him, I saw a now blackish tongue stir within the cloister of his teeth. William, his arm around Malachi’s shoulders, raised him, wiping away with his free hand a film of sweat that blanche his brow. Malachi felt a touch, a presence; he stared straight ahead, surely not seeing, certainly not recognizing who was before him. He raised a trembling hand, grasped William by the chest, drawing his face down until they almost touched, then faintly and hoarsely he uttered some words: “He told me … truly… It had the power of a thousand scorpions…”
“Who told you?” William asked him. “Who?”
Malachi tried again to speak. But he was seized by a great trembling and his head fell backward. His face lost all color, all semblance of life. He was dead.
William stood up. He noticed the abbot beside him, but did not say a word to him. Then, behind the abbot, he saw Bernard Gui.
“My lord Bernard,” William asked, “who killed this man, after you so cleverly found and confined the murderers?”
“Do not ask me,” Bernard said. “I have never said I had consigned to the law all the criminals loose in this abbey. I would have done so gladly, had I been able.” He looked at William. “But the others I now leave to the severity-or the excessive indulgence of my lord abbot.” The abbot blanched and remained silent. Then Bernard left.
At that moment we heard a kind of whimpering, a choked sob. It was Jorge, on his kneeling bench, supported by a monk who must have described to him what had happened.
“It will never end …” he said in a broken voice. “O Lord, forgive us all!”
William bent over the corpse for another moment. He grasped the wrists, turned the palms of the hands toward the light. The pads of the first three fingers of the right hand were darkened.
LAUDS
Was it time for lauds already? Was it earlier or later? From that point on I lost all temporal sense. Perhaps hours went by, perhaps less, in which Malachi’s body was laid out in church on a catafalque, while the brothers formed a semicircle around it. The abbot issued instructions for a prompt funeral. I heard him summon Benno and Nicholas of Morimondo. In less than a day, he said, the abbey had been deprived of its librarian and its cellarer. “You,” he said to Nicholas, “will take over the duties of Remigio. You know the jobs of many, here in the abbey. Name someone to take your place in charge of the forges, and provide for today’s immediate necessities in the kitchen, the refectory. You are excused from offices. Go.” Then to Benno he said, “Only yesterday evening you were named Malachi’s assistant. Provide for the opening of the scriptorium and make sure no one goes up into the library alone.” Shyly, Benno pointed out that he had not yet been initiated into the secrets of that place. The abbot glared at him sternly. “No one has said you will be. You see that work goes on and is offered as a prayer for our dead brothers … and for those who will yet die. Each monk will work only on the books already given him. Those who wish may consult the catalogue. Nothing else. You are excused from vespers, because at that hour you will lock up everything.”
“But how will I come out?” Benno asked.
“Good question. I will lock the lower doors after supper. Go.”
He went out with them, avoiding William, who wanted to talk to him. In the choir, a little group remained: Alinardo, Pacificus of Tivoli, Aymaro of Alessandria, and Peter of Sant’Albano. Aymaro was sneering.
“Let us thank the Lord,” he said. “With the German dead, there was the risk of having a new librarian even more barbarous.”
“Who do you think will be named in his place?” William asked.
Peter of Sant’Albano smiled enigmatically. “After everything that has happened these past few days, the problem is no longer the librarian, but the abbot…”
“Hush,” Pacificus said to him. And Alinardo, with his usual pensive look, said, “They will commit another injustice … as in my day. They must be stopped”
“Who?” William asked. Pacificus took him confidentially by the arm and led him a distance from the old man, toward the door.
“Alinardo … as you know … we love him very much. For us he represents the old tradition and the finest days of the abbey… But sometimes he speaks without knowing what he says. We are all worried about the new librarian. The man must be worthy, and mature, and wise… That is all there is to it.”
“Must he know Greek?” William asked.
“And Arabic, as tradition has it: his office requires it. But there are many among us with these gifts. I, if I may say so, and Peter, and Aymaro …”
“Benno knows Greek.”
“Benno is too young. I do not know why Malachi chose him as his assistant yesterday, but …”
“Did Adelmo know Greek?”
“I believe not. No, surely not.”
“But Venantius knew it. And Berengar. Very well, I thank you.”
We left, to go and get something in the kitchen.
“Why did you want to find out who knew Greek?” I asked.
“Because all those who die with blackened fingers know Greek. Therefore it would be well to expect the next corpse among those who know Greek. Including me. You are safe.”
“And what do you think of Malachi’s last words?”
“You heard them. Scorpions. The fifth trumpet announces, among other thins, the coming of locusts that will torment men with a sting like a scorpion’s. And Malachi informed us that someone had forewarned him.”