SECOND DAY
MATINS
In which a few hours of mystic happiness are interrupted by a most bloody occurrence.

Symbol sometimes of the Devil, sometimes of the Risen Christ, no animal is more untrustworthy than the cock. Our order knew some slothful ones who never crowed at sunrise. On the other hand, especially in winter, the office of matins takes place when night is still total and all nature is asleep, for the monk must rise in darkness and pray at length in darkness, waiting for day and illuminating the shadows with the flame of devotion. Therefore, custom wisely provided for some wakers, who were not to go to bed when their brothers did, but would spend the night reciting in cadence the exact number of psalms that would allow them to measure the time passed, so that, at the conclusion of the hours of sleep granted the others, they would give the signal to wake.
So that night we were waked by those who moved through the dormitory and the pilgrims’ house ringing a bell, as one monk went from cell to cell shouting, “Benedicamus Domino,” to which each answered, “Deo gratias.”
William and I followed the Benedictine custom: in less than half an hour we prepared to greet the new day, then we went down into the choir, where the monks, prostrate on the floor, reciting the first fifteen psalms, were waiting until the novices entered led by their master. Then each sat in his regular stall and the choir chanted, “Domine labia mea aperies et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam.” The cry rose toward the vaulted ceiling of the church like a child’s plea. Two monks climbed to the pulpit and intoned the ninety-fourth psalm, “Venite exultemus,” which was followed by the others prescribed. And I felt the warmth of re?newed faith.
The monks were in the stalls, sixty figures made indistinguishable by their habits and cowls, sixty shad?ows barely illuminated by the fire from the great tripod, sixty voices joined in praise of the Almighty. And, hearing this moving harmony, vestibule of the delights of paradise, I asked myself whether the abbey were truly a place of concealed mysteries, of illicit attempts to reveal them, and of grim threats. Because it now seemed to me, on the contrary, the dwelling of sainted men, cenacle of virtue, vessel of learning, ark of prudence, tower of wisdom, domain of meekness, bastion of strength, thurible of sanctity.
After six psalms, the reading of Holy Scripture began. Some monks were nodding with sleepiness, and one of the night wakers wandered among the stalls with a little lamp to wake any who had dozed off again. If a monk succumbed to drowsiness, as penance he would take the lamp and continue the round. The chanting of another six psalms continued. Then the abbot gave his benedic?tion, the hebdomadary said the prayers, all bowed toward the altar in a moment of meditation whose sweetness no-one can comprehend who has not experi?enced those hours of mystic ardor and intense inner peace. Finally, cowls again over their faces, all sat and solemnly intoned the “Te Deum.” I, too, praised the Lord because He had released me from my doubts and freed me from the feeling of uneasiness with which my first day at the abbey had filled me. We are fragile creatures, I said to myself; even among these learned and devout monks the Evil One spreads petty envies, foments subtle hostilities, but all these are as smoke then dispersed by the strong wind of faith, the moment all gather in the name of the Father, and Christ de?scends into their midst.

Between matins and lauds the monk does not return to his cell, even if the night is still dark. The novices followed their master into the chapter house to study the psalms; some of the monks remained in church to tend to the church ornaments, but the majority strolled in the cloister in silent meditation, as did William and I. The servants were asleep and they went on sleeping when, the sky still dark, we returned to the choir for lauds.
The chanting of the psalms resumed, and one in particular, among those prescribed for Mondays, plunged me again into my earlier fears: “The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes. The words of his mouth are iniquity.” It seemed to me an ill omen that the Rule should have set for that very day such a terrible admonition. Nor were my pangs of uneasiness eased, after the psalms of praise, by the usual reading of the Apocalypse; the figures of the doorway returned to my mind, the carvings that had so overwhelmed my heart and eyes the day before. But after the responsory, the hymn, and the versicle, as the chanting of the Gospel began, I glimpsed just above the altar, beyond the windows of the choir, a pale glow that was already making the panes shine in their various colors, sub?dued till then by the darkness. It was not yet dawn, which would triumph during Prime, just as we would be singing “Deus qui est sanctorum splendor mirabilis” and “Iam lucis orto sidere.” It was barely the first faint herald of a winter daybreak, but it was enough, and the dim penumbra now replacing the night’s darkness in the nave was enough to relieve my heart.
We sang the words of the divine book and, as we were bearing witness to the Word come to enlighten all peoples, it was as if the daystar in all its splendor were invading the temple. The light, still absent, seemed to me to shine in the words of the canticle, mystic, scented lily that opened among the arches of the vaults. “I thank Thee, O Lord, for this moment of ineffable joy,” I prayed silently, and said to my heart, “Foolish heart, what do you fear?”
Suddenly some noises were heard from the direction of the north door. I wondered why the servants, prepar?ing for their work, disturbed the sacred functions in this way. At that moment three swineherds came in, terror on their faces; they went to the abbot and whispered something to him. The abbot first calmed them with a gesture, as if he did not want to interrupt the office; but other servants entered, and the shouts became louder. “A man! A dead man!” some were saying. And others: “A monk. You saw the sandals?”
Prayers stopped, and the abbot rushed out, motioning the cellarer to follow him. William went after them, but by now the other monks were also leaving heir stalls and hurrying outside.
The sky was now light, and the snow on the round made the compound even more luminous. Behind the choir, in front of the pens, where the day before had stood the great jar with the pigs’ blood, a strange object, almost cruciform, protruded above the edge of the vessel, as if two stakes had been driven into the ground, to be covered with rags for scaring off birds.
But they were human legs, the legs of a man thrust head down into the vessel of blood.
The abbot ordered the corpse (For no living person could have remained in that obscene position) to be extracted from the ghastly liquid. The hesitant swine?herds approached the edge and, staining themselves with blood, drew out the poor, bloody thing. As had been explained to me, the blood, having been property stirred immediately after it was shed, and then left out in the cold, had not clotted, but the layer covering the corpse was now beginning to solidify; it soaked the habit, made the face unrecognizable. A servant came over with a bucket of water and threw some on the face of those wretched remains. Another bent down with a cloth to wipe the features. And before our eyes appeared the white face of Venantius of Salvemec, the Greek scholar with whom we had talked that afternoon by Adelmo’s codices.
The abbot came over. “Brother William, as you see, something is afoot in this abbey, something that de?mands all your wisdom. But I beseech you: act quickly!”
“Was he present in choir during the office?” William asked, pointing to the corpse.
“No,” the abbot said. “I saw his stall was empty.”
“No one else was absent?”
“It did not seem so. I noticed nothing.”
William hesitated before asking the next question, and he did so in a whisper, taking care that the others could not hear: “Berengar was in his stall?”
The abbot looked at him with uneasy amazement, as if to signify that he was struck to see my master harbor a suspicion that he himself had briefly harbored, for more comprehensible reasons. He said then rapidly, “He was there. He sits in the first row, almost at my right hand.”
“Naturally,” William said, “all this means nothing. I don’t believe anyone entering the choir passed behind the apse, and therefore the corpse could have been here for several hours, at least since the time when everyone had gone to bed.”
“To be sure, the first servants rise at dawn, and that is why they discovered him only now.”
William bent over the corpse, as if he were used to dealing with dead bodies. He dipped the cloth lying nearby into the water of the bucket and further cleanse Venantius’s face. Meanwhile, the other monks crowded around, frightened, forming a talkative circle on which the abbot imposed silence. Among the others, now making his way forward, came Severinus, who saw to matters of physical health in the abbey; and he bent down next to my master. To hear their dialogue,............