Brother Hilarius said, “It doesn’t what, Brother?”
“It doesn’t save us.” Holding up the lease, which was now a tight double roll, he said, “This is not the actual lease. It doesn’t contain the signatures of the participants. Nor is it, in any legal sense, a true copy. It isn’t notarized and there’s no original to compare it to for inaccuracies. It just wouldn’t carry sufficient weight in a court of law to decide the case conclusively for our side.”
Brother Flavian, ever the firebrand, cried out, “But it shows we’re in the right! Would we lie?”
“Men have been known to,” Brother Clemence told him drily. “Even clerics have on occasion dealt rashly with the truth.”
Brother Quillon said, “You mean, we went through all this for nothing? All we’ve done is find out we’re the victim of a miscarriage of justice?”
“Not exactly,” said Brother Clemence, and Brother Oliver sighed. Pushing ahead, Brother Clemence said, “We don’t have the original lease, but we do have this version, and it may be able to help us. The courts have established a precedent that could be very useful to us here. When a primary document is unavailable, the contents of that document can be reconstructed by assumption from secondary documents and the matter treated as though the primary document had been produced.”
“Oh, Brother Clemence,” Brother Oliver said wearily, and he sat down at the refectory table, shaking his head.
“This is a secondary document,” Brother Clemence said, waving the illuminated lease again. “In those messy filing cabinets over there, Brother Oliver, there must be other secondary documents that refer either directly or by inference to matters in the original lease. Letters, tax bills, account books, I don’t know what all. What I will do, now that I have this copy to tell me what to look for, is go through every document we possess and construct the strongest possible profile of the original lease. I will then ask a friend of mine, an attorney who volunteered the other day to help us for no fee, to get in touch with the Flatterys’ attorney, present our case, and suggest we settle out of court.”
Brother Oliver said, “And you really think there’s a chance?”
“It depends,” Brother Clemence told him, “on what secondary documents I can find.”
“And you’ll start searching right away?”
“As soon as I’ve cleaned up,” Brother Clemence said, “and broken my fast.”
“Oh,” said Brother Oliver. “Of course.”
Of course. We’d all been so caught up in this quest that all the more mundane things of life had become mislaid and forgotten. Breakfast; yes, indeed. We never eat until after morning Mass, of course, and today we hadn’t eaten at all. I was suddenly aware that I was starving, and I could see the same awareness in all the filthy faces around me.
Which was the other item Brother Clemence had mentioned; cleaning up. Scrounging around up there in that musty attic, smearing ourselves with dirt, cutting and bruising ourselves, getting ourselves severally muddied and bloodied, we looked now less like monks and more like the inhabitants of some medieval lunatic asylum.
As did our surroundings. This room, Brother Oliver’s office, was a knee-deep swirl of incomprehensible papers. Dust that had come downstairs with us hung in the air or had already settled on the room’s various surfaces. Brother Quillon now said, “Well, you won’t be able to find a thing in here the way it is. I’ll clean up.”
“I’ll help you,” Brother Valerian offered.
“Wonderful.”
The group was diffusing itself into separate conversations. Brother Leo, our cook, said, “I’d better get to the kitchen. Who’s on duty with me this morning?”
It turned out to be Brothers Thaddeus and Peregrine. “Well, come along, then,” Brother Leo said grumpily.
“Just a second,” Brother Clemence said, and when we all turned to give him our attention he said, “I hope everybody realizes the implication of this discovery.”
Brother Oliver said, “Implication? Besides the obvious?”
“This means,” Brother Clemence said, gesturing with the rolled-up lease, “that Brother Silas may have been right after all. The original lease really might have been stolen, to keep us from proving we have the right to stay here. So I think none of us should say anything to anybody about this copy we found.”
We all agreed, rather somberly, and then the kitchen trio went off to make breakfast while the rest of us headed upstairs to wash and change.
Brother Oliver stopped me briefly at the head of the stairs. “We’ll talk after breakfast,” he said.
“Yes, Brother,” I said.
And as I washed the attic grime from myself I wondered if Brother Clemence — or any of the others — had thought about the other implication of our find. If Brother Silas was right, if the lease had been stolen by somebody working either for the Flatterys or Dimp, who could have stolen it? Who, but one of us?
Eight
We had our talk after breakfast, strolling in the cloister, past the refectory and the kitchen, with the courtyard on our other side. The high wall separating us from the street marked one boundary of our walk, and the chapel and cemetery marked the other, a symbolism that struck me as simultaneously pat and obscure.
We walked together one circuit in silence. I could feel Brother Oliver glancing sidelong at me from time to time, but he remained very patient, not speaking until we had passed our original starting point, and then saying, “Yes, Brother Benedict?”
“I don’t know where to begin,” I said.
“Why not at the traditional place?”
“Yes, of course.” I frowned, scrinching my face up tight. I held my breath for several seconds, and at last I burst out with it: “Brother Oliver, I’m emotionally involved with that woman!”
“Woman?”
“Eileen Flattery.”
“I know which woman, Brother Benedict,” he informed me. “But what do you mean by the phrase ‘emotionally involved’?”
What did I mean by it? Wasn’t that the question I’d been asking myself? We walked as far as the front wall, then reversed. “I mean,” I said at last, “that my mind is confused. She’s in my thoughts waking and sleeping. I hardly know who I am any more.”
Brother Oliver listened to this definition in silence, his somber gaze on the alternating toes of his sandaled feet licking out from under his robe as he walked. When I finished, he nodded slowly and said, “In other words, she has attracted your attention.”
“Yes,” I said.
He nodded again, continuing to watch his feet, and we walked the length of the cloister as far as the archway leading to the chapel and cemetery. Again we reversed, and he said, “Is this a sexual feeling?”
“I suppose it must be,” I said. “I want to touch her the way an infant wants to touch a gold watch.”
I must have spoken somewhat forcefully. Brother Oliver flashed me a quick startled look, but said nothing.
I went on. “Last night,” I said, “I did touch her.”
He stopped in his tracks, and looked at me.
“Not very much,” I said.
“Perhaps you should tell me about it,” he suggested. He didn’t walk on, so neither did I.
“Last night,” I said, “she took me for a ride in Central Park. She stopped the car and two young men tried to rob us. After I chased them off she was—”
“You chased them off?”
“It worked out that way. And afterwards she was trembling, and I put my arms around her.”
“I see,” he said.
“I hadn’t done that with anybody for a long time,” I said.
“No,” he agreed. “And that was as far as it went?”
“Yes, Brother.”