William H. Hallahan - by The Monk Read Free Book Online

Kathleen saw her.
    "What did you see?"
    "Hmmmm?"
    "In the cup. My tea leaves. What did you see?"
    Agnes sat on the edge of the bed. "I knew a woman once in
these parts who had the second sight and she would read tea leaves
and she showed me a little about it. And for fun I can see some
things, but these leaves, I can't read them. And I shouldn't even
tell you about it for fear of frightening you. But, well, your
baby--there's shooting stars and these great upheavals in the
universe. Some momentous event and I'm not competent to read it.
Maybe you can. . .you've the second sight. Do you have any sense of
seeing the future?"
    "I don't have the second sight."
    "Yes, you do. You just don't know it."
    Kathleen turned her face away and sobbed. "I saw the baby
impaled on a thorn by a butcher-bird."
    "Oh, dear God."
 
 
    It was difficult to say who first thought of the monastery. Or
even why. It just became accepted that the monks would baptize
Brendan Davitt. And one fine Sunday, a few days before the Davitts
flew back to America, several carloads trooped to the monastery for
the baptism.
    The monks were a strange order. They were mendicants who wandered
the earth, solitaries who begged for their daily bread and spent
their time meditating and praying. They slept wherever they were
admitted, usually among the poor and the pariahs in the skid rows and
tenderloins and cribs of Europe, America and Asia. Periodically they
would return to their monastery in Ireland for communion, confession
and moral restoration, and in the footsteps of Jesus, they vowed
never to ride in any vehicle except ships. They wandered the earth on
foot only. They wore distinctive cowled cassocks, made of heavy black
wool with a white wool cross from shoulder to shoulder and chin to
shoe tops.
    They were said to still practice ancient Druid rituals, and
because of their extensive travels over many years, they were adept
at all the religious practices of India and China. The monks were
regarded as religious knights-errant, doing battle with the spiritual
evil that most men professed no longer to believe in. The Irish in
the region said the monks could see into your soul and tell what kind
of a person you were.
    The monastery itself stood on a headland, high above the sea,
where the wind never stopped blowing, a great craggy stone affair
hammered and chiseled from the rocky cliff itself.
    The stones were constantly wetted by the bursting surf that
thrashed without end against the base of the cliff--emerald-green
water covered with white spume, rising and falling forever. Overhead,
like a living crown, seabirds circled--gulls, guillemots and
kittiwakes--constantly calling and diving.
    The monks seemed quite pleased to be performing a baptism,
delighted in fact with the visitors, and six of them came out of the
monastery to greet the christening party. One, Brother Mark, took
Brendan in his arms, and clucking his tongue, he carried him inside.
    A monk asked Kathleen, "Truly, is it Brendan you'll name him?
Marvelous. Brendan was a monk and he's a patron saint, a great
adventurer. And although the Italians dispute it, Brendan sailed to
America long before Columbus. And here's another Brendan going to
America. Such an appropriate name."
    How severely Oriental everything was inside. How compact and
functional. There was no clutter anywhere. As the monks walked ahead
of the baptism party along a dark corridor, they passed in and out of
shafts of sunlight. Everything was pared down to the essentials--the
perfect setting for a group of men lost in thought.
    Brother Mark and another monk led them into the chapel, and beside
the altar they laid Brendan on a hand-carved wooden table and opened
his swaddlings.
    "Oh, my," murmured Brother Mark.
    The other monk inhaled sharply. "A purple aura."
    "Fetch Father Joseph. Quickly."
    Brother Mark turned and looked at the baptismal font. There stood
a silver bucket, holding holy water, and a silver aspergillum with a
wooden handle.