The bookcases which lined the walls and touched the ceiling were centuries old, walnut, chocolatey in colour and polished with time. Billows of smoke poured over the top of the cases on the afflicted wall. Had it not been for Brother Marcel’s enlarged prostate the outcome that night might have been different. In the brothers’ dormitory, across the courtyard from the library, the elderly monk awoke for one of his usual nocturnal visits to the water closet and smelled smoke. He arthritically shuffled up and down the halls shouting ‘Fire!’ and before all that long, the SPV, the volunteer fire brigade, was rumbling up the gravel drive to the Trappist Abbey of Ruac in their venerable Renault pumper.
The brigade served a coterie of Perigord Noir communes along the River Vezere. The chief of the brigade, Bonnet, was from Ruac and he knew the abbey well enough. He was the proprietor of a cafe by day, older than the others on his crew, with the imperious air and ample gut of a small-business owner and a high-ranking officer of the SPV. At the entrance to the library wing he blew past Abbot Menaud who looked like a frightened penguin in his hastily donned white robe and black scapular, flapping his short arms and muttering in guttural spasms of alarm: ‘Hurry! Hurry! The library!’
The chief surveyed the smoke-filled room and ordered his crew to set the hoses and drag them inside.
‘You’re not going to use your hoses!’ the abbot pleaded. ‘The books!’
‘And how do you suggest we fight this fire, Father?’ the chief replied. ‘With prayer?’ Bonnet then shouted to his lieutenant, a garage mechanic with wine on his breath, ‘The fire’s in that wall. Pull that bookcase down!’
‘Please!’ the abbot implored. ‘Be gentle with my books.’ Then, in a flash of horror, the abbot realised the precious St Benedict text was in the direct path of the encroaching flames. He rushed past Bonnet and the others and snatched it off the shelf, cradling it in his arms like an infant.
The fire captain roared after him melodramatically: ‘I can’t do my job with him interfering. Someone, take him out. I’m in charge here!’
A group of monks who were gathered around took hold of their abbot’s arms and silently but insistently pulled him away into the smoke-tinged night air. Bonnet personally wielded an axe, drove the spiked end into an eye-level bookshelf, right where the Dijon version of the Rule had been a few moments earlier, and yanked back as hard as he could. The axe ripped through the spine of another book on its way to the wood and sent scraps of paper fluttering. The enormous bookcase tilted forward a few inches and spilled a small number of manuscripts. He repeated the maneouvre a few times and his men imitated him at other points along the wall.
Bonnet had always struggled with reading and harboured something of a hatred for books so for him, there was more than a little sadistic pleasure in this venture. With four men simultaneously hooked on, they wrenched their axes in unison and the large bookcase leaned, and in a torrent of falling books that resembled a rock slide on one of the local mountain roads, reached its tipping point.
The men scrambled to safety as the case crashed down onto the stone floor. Bonnet led his men onto the back of the fallen case which rested atop piles of volumes. Their heavy boots crashed onto, and in Bonnet’s case, through the walnut planking as they made their way to the burning wall.
‘Okay,’ Bonnet shouted, wheezing through his exertions, ‘Open up this wall and get some water on it fast!’
When the dawn came, the firefighters were still hosing down the few remaining hot-spots. The abbot was finally let back inside. He shuffled in like an old man; he was only in his sixties but the night had aged him and he appeared stooped and frail.
Tears came when he saw the destruction. The shattered cases, the masses of soggy print, the soot everywhere. The burned wall was largely knocked down and he could see straight through into the kitchen. Why, he wondered, couldn’t they have fought the fire through the kitchen? Why was it necessary to destroy his books? But the abbey was saved and no lives were lost and for this, he had to be grateful. They would move forward. They always did.
Bonnet approached him through the rubble and offered an olive branch. ‘I’m sorry I was harsh with you, Dom Menaud. I was just doing my job.’
‘I know, I know,’ the abbot said numbly. ‘It’s just that… oh well, so much damage.’
‘Fires aren’t dainty affairs, I’m afraid. We’ll be away soon. I know a company that can help with the cleanup. The brother of one of my men in Montignac.’
‘We’ll use our own labour,’ the abbot replied. His eyes were wandering over the book-strewn floor. He stooped to pick up a soaking wet Bible, its sixteenth-century boards and leathers already possessing the ever-so- faint sweet smell of rekindled fungi. He used the folds of his habit sleeve to blot it but realised the futility of the act and simply placed it on the reading table, which had been pushed against an intact bookcase.
He shook his head and was about to leave for morning prayers when something else caught his attention.
In one corner, some distance from the piles of pulled-down books, was a distinctive binding he failed to recognise. The abbot was a scholar with an advanced degree in religious studies from the University of Paris. Over three decades, these books had become his intimates, his comrades. It was akin to having several thousand children and knowing all their names and birthdays.
But this book. He’d never seen it before; he was certain of that.
One of the firefighters, an affable, lanky fellow, watched closely as the abbot approached the book and stooped to inspect the binding.
‘That’s a funny-looking one, isn’t it, Father?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I found it, you know,’ the fireman said proudly.
‘Found it? Where?’
The fireman pointed to a part of the wall that was no longer there. ‘Just there. It was inside the wall. My axe just missed it. I was working fast so I threw it into the corner. Hope I didn’t damage it too badly.’
‘Inside the wall, you say.’
The abbot picked it up and straight away realised its weight was disproportionate to its size. Though elaborate, it was a small book, not much larger than a modern paperback and thinner than most. Its heft was a result of waterlogging. It was as soaked and saturated as a sponge. Water leaked onto his hand and through his fingers.
The cover was an extraordinary piece of leather, distinctively reddish in hue with, at its centre, a beautifully tooled depiction of a full-standing saint in flowing robes, his head encircled by a halo. The binding was embellished with a fine raised split-cord spine, tarnished silver corners and endbands, and five silver bosses, each the size of a pea, one on each corner and one in the middle of the saint’s body. The back cover, though untooled, had five identical bosses. The book was firmly held closed by a pair of silver clasps, tight around wet leaves of parchment.
The abbot sorted through first impressions: thirteenth or fourteenth century, potentially illustrated, highest quality.
And hidden. Why?
‘What’s that?’ Bonnet was at his side, thrusting his stubbled chin forward like the prow of a ship. ‘Let me see.’
The abbot was startled by the intrusion into his thoughts and automatically handed over the book. Bonnet dug the thick nail of his forefinger into one of the clasps and it easily popped open. The second clasp was more stubborn but only slightly. He tugged at the front cover and just as he seemed to be at the point of discovery, the board stuck firm. The waterlogging made the covers and pages as adherent as if they’d been glued together. In frustration he exerted more force but the cover stayed put.
‘No! Stop!’ the abbot cried. ‘You’ll rip it. Give it back to me.’
The chief snorted and handed the book over. ‘You think it’s a Bible?’ he asked.
‘No, I think not.’
‘What then?’
‘I don’t know, but there are more urgent things this morning. This is for another day.’
However, he was not cavalier about the book. He tucked it under his arm, took it back to his office and laid a white hand cloth on his desk. He placed the book onto the cloth and gently touched the image of the saint before hurrying off to the church to officiate at the Prime service.
Three days later, a hired car pulled through the abbey gates and parked in a visitor space just as its
