THE LAST MONK 2.

The young (or is it old?) monk is taken from the monastery.

THE LAST MONK

2.

I knew what was going to happen to me. I was going to enjoy a magnificent punishment, a merciless flogging during which any tear that I shed would be rewarded with an even greater lashing until my mistress tired of the effort and left me to bleed in peace. It had happened before, mercifully only the once when I had been caught touching myself, and now, surely, my sin was greater than that. I had fallen onto the sacred pathway of the tomb, and had felt its divine stones with my bare hands. Unforgiveable.

So my flogging would be glorious and unbearably painful. It was only right that it should be.

But no. Maybe I hadn’t as yet earned my punishment. I could just about hear what was being said, and the few words that I could make out confused me more than I have ever been confused before. There were voices, male voices like my own would be one day, musical, resonant and what Celestial had ironically called womanly, and then others, like I remember mine had been in my beginning, light, fragile, insecure, a child’s soprano voice. At least, that was the interpretation I put on them.

And the words added up to nothing. Sounds that ought to have meaning, but to me they were muffled nonsense with the odd sentence almost discernible.

“The poor girl looks terrified,” one voice said after a deal of meaningless rumbling.

What girl? I knew of no girl.

“Wouldn’t you be if you’d been incarcerated in that ` hell-hole for goodness knows how long?”

Hell-hole? Not the monastery, they couldn’t mean that, so what was the hell-hole, and who’d been in it?

“It’s been a good fifty years since any monks were registered living in the place, but it’s been kept almost clean by someone.”

All the time we were jolting along, and something mechanical was roaring, almost drowning out most of the mangled words I might hear.

Fifty years? It was only a day or two or maybe three since Celestial had gone to the tomb, and the door had slammed behind him with a dreadful finality. And that wasn’t twenty years, and twenty years sounded to me like an awfully long time

I wanted to tell whoever it was that it was me who had kept the place clean, who had gone through it on my hands an knees, sometimes until my fingers bled and the blood soaked into my monk’s habit, but words, sounds, the effort of speech, were all beyond me.

“Who do you think she is?”

She? I knew of no she. There had only been the monks and me all my life. It had been a happy place, filled with prayer and the odd song, with punishment being rare and well deserved. Satan had approved. Celestial told me so when he felt like smiling. But Celestial had gone to his grave, into the tomb, where a casket was prepared for him. No. There was only me, and I’m almost old enough to die. That’s something else that the monks, mostly Celestial, had told me, giving me confidence that my future would be a brief affair.

“The Inspector will have to look into her after she’s been checked over in hospital,” rumbled a voice, “she doesn’t look too bad for a lass who’s been kept so isolated in that morgue of a place.”

“How dared you!” I wanted to shout out, calling the most wonderful home on Earth a morgue! What is a morgue, any way? I’ve seen the word in one or two of the books I was permitted to read after Celestial taught me what words were, but it was never clear what it meant. But there was something macabre about the context, always to do with death and even worse, if anything is worse than death.

The Afterlife must be considerably worse. Or better. It might be better. I’m confused.

“The poor lass has got nits. They’ll have to be treated. And the bindings on her chest. They’re almost part of her. I tried to loosen them, but they’re so tight and filthy, and anyway, she resisted…”

Yes I did! So it’s me they’re talking about, is it? Though why refer to me as she? I’m as much a man as the monks were, and they were always he, weren’t they? But I need my bandage to stop me from swelling. Everyone knows that!

We arrived at the place they had called a hospital, though it was nothing like out hospital back at the monastery. Back there we had bottles of festering potions and piles of dried leaves from special bushes known only ti the monks, stuff that could cure all ills, and this place, well, there were no bottles but creatures that must have been women bustling about in smart clean clothes, things so clean it made me wish it had been time for the annual soaking of my own cloak and hood. With fragrant air around me I became increasingly aware that I carried a less pleasing fragrance with me.

Then it was to something much softer and less soiled than my cot in my cell and I was lain into it, covered over with such gentle fabrics that it crossed my mind that maybe I’d got everything quite wrong and I was actually in Satan’s Afterlife, though where were the flames meant to sear my flash for all of eternity?

There was nothing I would call painful here. Unless too much gentility is painful, that is.

Or the hot tub. After less time than I needed to work things out for myself I was collected and made to walk through a door to another space, one filled with steam and the most wonderful aroma imaginable, and two of the figures clad in pastel colours gently lowered me into a shining white container filled with steaming water.

So I was to be boiled to eternity, was I? I’ve heard of this worst of all punishments. Was this the dire treatment that was meted out to evil sinners like myself? Though I was hard pressed to recall a moment when I had done anything sinful enough for me to deserve being boiled beyond death.

But it was not so unpleasant. It was, in fact, beautiful, the water far from scalding yet pleasantly warm, and hands, real hands like mine, moved over my skin with foaming bubbles between their fingers, and it felt as if the stuff of life itself was being gently washed off me.

What was happening to me?

Then my chest cloth was soaked and, shame of all shames, it painfully came away from me leaving my naked flesh ready to swell like I was told it would.

“She’s got a decent bosom,” remarked one of the men washing me.

“She’ll be very pretty when we’ve got rid of all the grime,” observed another.

“And still young,” put in a third…

If if was me they were discussing there’s one thing I know for sure is I’m not young. No sir! Celestial had told me I was almost old enough to die, and wasn’t he himself dead? Hdn’t he known the truth?

“Come on then, let’s get her dried off and back to bed,” murmured a new voice, a woman’s for a change.

“Yes sir,” replied one of those working on my flesh.

Yes sir? Why is everything so topsy-turvy?

TO BE CONTINUED

© Peter Rogerson 06.08.23

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Reviews

[emmajoygreen]

Extraordinary to the point of wanting to reach the end of your book yet, somehow miss not a word! Seems the narrator is making discovery after discovery, finding the facts as seem, so unlike his assumptions.. the narrator appears either ignorant or naive but then, was has been told is odd yet beautiful, sad yet weird..

Fine, fine story telling. I will be back for more.. and more