After she came closer, Arcadia detected a faint odor of spices coming from the bier, instead of the stronger smell of putrefaction she had braced herself to expect. She thought that might help ease the grisly task ahead.
“Behan,” she whispered, taking the golden case out from under her cloak, “as I said, you brought this with you and now you’ll take it back.”
After loosening the cylinder’s cover, Arcadia placed the tube on the back shelf, then moved the vigil candles closer to the edge, so she could see better. The oak coffin was set on two barrels, bringing its top up to the height of her waist. She was relieved to see that the lid was pegged down only part way, probably because the bishop would ask the abbot to identify Behan before his burial. She blew on her cold fingers to restore circulation, and thought back to the night she had helped her husband dissect the corpse of Marios.
Getorius had begun to feel sick at what he was doing. Will I really be able to go through with this? What must Behan look like after being in the water so long?
Arcadia sucked in a breath and pulled up on the nearest peg. The squarish dowel held fast. Damp air had swollen the wood and expanded it in its retaining hole.
Blessed Cosmas. Please.
It took Arcadia half an hour, broken fingernails, and the sides of her thumbs and index fingers scraped raw before she was able to coax the six stubborn pegs loose. By then she was shaking, both from the exertion, and from the dread of realizing that the most horrifying part of her task still lay ahead.
The oak lid was heavy. After struggling to slide the cover off, Arcadia managed to lean it against the coffin’s side. The smell of putrefaction was stronger now, almost strong enough to overpower the sweetness of the powdered spikenard, myrrh, and cassia bark that had been sprinkled on the corpse. Balsam branches covered the body. She slowly removed the evergreens, laid them on the wet floor, took a candle off the shelf, brought it closer and forced herself to look at the dead monk.
The deacons had dressed Behan in a new tunic of undyed gray wool and covered his face with a linen cloth.
“Mercifully so for us, Cosmas,” Arcadia murmured, hoping that a whispered conversation with the patron of physicians would bolster her courage. “Bloated features that have been soaking in river water for almost seven weeks would not be a pleasant sight, would they?”
Arcadia set the candle down, clenched her jaw, and lifted the monk’s robe. Above a loincloth, the dark cavity from which the organs had been excised by the embalmers yawned open. She wished she had taken a more active part in the animal dissections Getorius performed, rather than relying on him to tell her only as much as he felt she should know. Now she was faced with an abdominal cavity that was exposed down to the posterior tissues.
The deacons had sprinkled the three fragrant spices inside the cavity to help control the stench of decay, but in any case Arcadia’s sense of revulsion was tempered by admiration for the clean way the Egyptian priests had taken out the organs. Herodotus described how embalmers cut along a body’s flank with a sharpened Ethiopian stone. If the Isis priests followed tradition she thought they might have used a blade of black volcanic glass—the obsius mentioned by the Elder Pliny.
Struggling to stem a rising sense of nausea in her throat, Arcadia took the Celtic case and worked it lengthwise into the cavity, then angled it up until it pushed against a collarbone and the base rested on the pelvic wall.
“Cosmas, our cylinder fits! Now all we need do is sew the opening together, replace the lid, and get out of this charnel house without being seen.”
With stiff, cold fingers, Arcadia fumbled in her purse and found the suturing needle she had already threaded with silk. Her raw bruises stung and her hands were numb from handling the chill metal case. She made an attempt to warm her fingers by passing them over the candle flames, but, nervous at being discovered, decided she could not delay any longer.
Tears blurred her vision as she strained to pull together the cold, shrunken flaps of abdominal skin. They finally joined, but although she began suturing the tissues using the technique Getorius had shown her, she became impatient to close the gap, and finished with a stitch she had learned as a girl in working with cloth.
By the time Arcadia completed the closure her fingers were as hard and white as marble. The sour taste of bile coated her throat. She smoothed down Behan’s tunic without rechecking the sutures, then clasped her frigid hands a moment in the relative warmth of her armpits.
Levering the heavy coffin lid back into position further drained Arcadia’s strength. She began shivering uncontrollably. Her feet were deadened from standing in the icy water. Half-limping to the door, she opened it and stepped outside to gulp in the clean night air. After pushing the portal shut, she turned to lean against a porch column, retching in painful heaves, and blew on her bruised fingers.
“Cosmas, we’ve still got to get back to Getorius’ room,” she murmured, after wiping her mouth on a sleeve. “Help me.”
At the end of the portico, Arcadia turned onto the garden path, and was shocked when she bumped
