'Las Vegas.'
6 JULIUS 777
C onfluence.
The word had been rattling around his mind, and when he was alone it would occasionally roll off his lips and make him tremble.
He had been preoccupied by the confluence, as had his brethren, but he was convinced he was more affected than the others, a wholly imagined position since one did not openly discuss such matters.
Of course, there had long been an awareness that this seventh day would come, but the feelings of portent had dramatically escalated when in the month of Maius a comet appeared, and now, two months later, its fiery tail persisted in the night sky.
Prior Josephus was awake before the bell rang for Lauds. He threw off his rough coverlet, stood and relieved himself in his chamber pot, then splashed his face with a handful of cool water from a basin. One chair, one table, and a cot with a straw pallet on a hard earthen floor. This was his windowless cell; his white tunic of undyed wool and his leather sandals were his only earthly possessions.
And he was happy.
In his forty-fourth year he was already balding and a little fat, owing to his affection for the strong ale that poured from the barrels of the abbey brewery. The baldness on his dome made it easier to maintain his tonsure, and Ignatius, the barber surgeon, made fast work of him every month, sending him on his way with a pat to his raw pate and a brotherly wink.
He had entered the monastery at age fifteen, and as an oblate was restricted to the remotest parts of the monastery until his initiation was complete and he advanced to full membership. Once inside, he knew he would live here forever and die within its walls. His feelings of love for God and his brotherly bond with the members of his community-his famulus Christi-were so strong he often wept with joy, tempered only by the guilt of knowing how fortunate he was compared to the many wretched souls on the isle.
He knelt by his bed and, following the tradition that St. Benedict himself had begun, began his spiritual day with the Lord's Prayer in order that, as Benedict had written, 'the thorns of scandal that are wont to arise' would be cleansed from the community. Pater noster, qui es in caelis: sanctificetur Nomen Tuum; adveniat Regnum Tuum; fiat voluntas Tua…
He finished, crossed himself, and at that moment the abbey bell chimed. Suspended in the tower by a heavy rope, the bell had been fashioned almost two decades earlier by Matthias, the community blacksmith and a dear friend of Josephus, long dead from the pox. The melodious clang of the clapper between the beaten iron plates always reminded Josephus of the hearty laugh of the ruddy-cheeked blacksmith. He wanted to dwell for a moment on his friend's memory but the word confluence invaded his thoughts instead.
There were chores to be done before Lauds, and as the prior of the community he was charged with overseeing the work of novices and young ministers. Outside the dormitory it was pleasantly cool, inky dark, and when he breathed the moist air through his nose it tasted of the sea. In the stables, the cows were laden with milk, and he was pleased the young men were already attending to their udders by the time he arrived.
'Peace be with you, brother,' he quietly said to each man, touching them on the shoulder as he passed. Then he froze, realizing there were seven cows and seven men.
Seven.
God's mysterious number.
The Book of Genesis alone was ripe with sevens: the seven heavens, the seven thrones, the seven seals, the seven churches. The walls of Jericho crumbled on the seventh day of the siege. In Revelations, seven spirits of God were sent forth into the earth. There were exactly seven generations from David to the birth of Christ, the Lord.
And now they were on the verge of the seventh day of the seventh month of Anno Domini 777, confluent with the advent of the comet that Paulinus, the abbey astronomer, had warily named Cometes Luctus, the Comet of Lamentation.
And then there was the matter of Santesa, wife of Ubertus the stonecutter, nearing the end of her worrisome term.
How could everyone appear so placid?
What, in the Lord's name, would tomorrow bring?
The church at Vectis Abbey was a grand work in progress, a source of immense pride. The original timber and thatch church, built nearly a century earlier, was a sturdy structure that had held up well to the harsh coastal winds and the lashings of sea storms. The history of the church and the abbey were well known, as some of the older ministers had personally served with some of the founding brothers. Indeed, in his youth one of their number, the ancient Alric, now too infirm to even leave his cell for mass, had met Birinus, the exalted Bishop of Dorchester.
Birinus, a Frank, came to Wessex in the year 634, having been made a bishop by Pope Honorius with a commission to convert the heathen West Saxons. He soon found himself an arbiter of a civil war in this godforsaken land and endeavored to forge an alliance between the loutish West Saxon king, Cynegils, and Oswald, King of Northumbria, an entirely more agreeable sort, a Christian. But Oswald would not ally himself with a nonbeliever, and Birinus, sensing a glorious opportunity, persuaded Cynegils to convert to Christianity, personally pouring baptismal water over his filthy hair in the name of Christ.
A pact with Oswald followed, then a long peace, and Cynegils in gratitude gave Dorchester to Birinus as his episcopal see and became his benefactor. Birinus, for his part, embarked on a campaign to found abbeys in the tradition of St. Benedict throughout the southern lands, and when the charter for Vectis Abbey was established in 686, the year of the great plague, the last of the Isles of Britannia came to the bosom of Christianity. Cynegils bequeathed to the Church sixty hides of good land near running water on this island enclave, an easy sail from the Wessex shores.
Now it was up to Aetia, the present Bishop of Dorchester, to keep the silver flowing from royal households to Church interests. He had impressed on King Offa of Mercia the spiritual benefits of funding the next phase of glory for Vectis Abbey-its conversion from wood to masonry-to praise and honor the Lord. 'For after all,' the bishop had murmured to the king, 'prestige is measured not in oak, but in stone.'
In a quarry not far from the abbey walls, Italian stonecutters had been laboring for the past two years, chiseling blocks of sandstone and oxcarting them to the abbey, where the cementarii mortared them in place, slowly erecting the church walls using the existing timber structure as a frame. Throughout the day the incessant metallic clanging of chisel on stone filled the air, silenced only during the Offices, when the ministers filled the Sanctuary for quiet prayer and contemplation.
Josephus swept back through the dormitory on his way to Lauds and gently opened the door of Alric's cell to make sure the old monk had made it through the night. He was heartened to hear snoring, so he whispered a prayer over the curled body, slipped out and entered the church through the night stair.
Fewer than a dozen candles lit the Sanctuary, but the light was sufficient to prevent mishaps. High above, in the dark, Josephus could make out the shapes of fruit bats darting among the rafters. The brothers were standing on either side of the altar in two opposing ranks, patiently waiting for the abbot to arrive. Josephus sidled next to Paulinus, a small nervous monk, and had they not heard the heavy main door creaking open, they might have exchanged a furtive greeting. But the abbot was approaching and they dared not speak.
Abbot Oswyn was an imposing man with long limbs and large shoulders who had spent much of his life a head taller than his brethren, but in his later years he seemed to shrink as a painful curving of his spine stooped him. As a result of his malady his eyes were permanently cast downward at the earth and in recent years he found it nearly impossible to gaze up toward the heavens. Over time his disposition had darkened, which had inarguably cast a pall over the fraternity of the community.
The ministers could hear him shuffling into the Sanctuary, his sandals scraping the floorboards. As usual, his
