The Martyr’s Curse

As Ben discovered, Roby was a good teacher, too. Under his patient tutelage, Ben became pretty adept in the art of milking goats and cattle without getting butted or trampled to death or spilling milk everywhere. The only occasion when Roby burst out laughing was when Ben fell flat on his face trying to catch a running, flapping chicken that wouldn’t let itself be herded into the hen house. Roby’s mirth was like a child’s, which just made Ben warm to him more. They’d laughed together for about half an hour that time.

Afterwards, Ben had realised that it was the first time he’d laughed in months.

His contact with the monks themselves was more limited. They were men whose stillness and calm fascinated him. Observing their vow of silence, they seldom spoke to one another as they went about their duties, let alone to him. One exception to the rule was the weekly visit Ben received from Père Jacques, the Father Master of Novices, a kindly man Ben put in his late sixties. Ostensibly, the visits were to find out how Ben was, whether he needed anything, how he was recovering. The Father Master of Novices never probed, but Ben could sense the man was curious as to the intentions of this stranger in their midst.

Little by little, the serene daily rhythm of silence, prayer and hard work had seeped into his bones until it felt like part of his life. Every morning at quarter to six, Ben would get up, complete his exercises and then go and see to the livestock. At eight the bell tolled for the first time, and the monks would assemble for Mass. Ben’s morning was spent working, taking care of the gardens and the orchard. Lunch was at noon, a simple dish of vegetables, eggs or fish, eaten alone in his cell. The food was served by a monk pushing a wooden trolley down the corridors, on a tray slid through a hatch – like in prison, except here there were no locks on any door. Wine or beer were permitted in extreme moderation, though Ben avoided both.

The rest of the afternoon was spent working until Vespers at four, then there was a light supper. At seven the bell tolled again for prayer. An hour later was bedtime, but it didn’t last long. The Carthusians believed in a semi-nocturnal life, on the grounds that the stillness of night invited them to more fervent prayer. At eleven-thirty the bell summoned the monks to a session of prayer in their cells; then shortly after midnight the community made their way back through the barely lit cloisters and would sit in the darkness of the church in profound silence before the chanting of Matins began. It wasn’t until deep into the small hours that they returned to their cells, for yet more prayer, before they finally retired to bed for just two or three hours’ rest before the whole routine began again.

There was no TV. No radio, no phones. Secular reading material was strictly limited. Computers and the internet were unknown here. It was a life that had remained fundamentally unchanged since the founding of the Carthusian Order in the early eleventh century. The Order’s motto was Stat crux dum volvitur orbis: The cross stands still while the globe revolves. The existence this place offered was designed to make you lose all interest in the affairs of the outside world, and it was effective in ways Ben couldn’t have imagined.

Finally, one cold midwinter’s evening by the glow of a crackling wood fire, as the snow fell silently outside over the mountains and layered the roofs and walls of the monastery buildings under the silver moonlight, without being asked, Ben had told the Father Master of Novices what was in his heart.

Jeff Dekker, the former SBS commando who had been his business partner and closest friend, would have thought Ben had lost his mind. This was the guy who’d never once turned away from trouble, even when the odds were at their suicidal craziest. Who’d taken down the worst of the worst and protected the innocent as if he’d been born to it. Adventure and risk were in his blood.

But not any more. Those days were now over for good.

Ben had said, ‘I want to stay.’

Chapter Four

It had been after that discussion that Ben had been taken to see the prior. The head of the monastery lived in just the same kind of humble quarters as the other members of the order. His name was Père Antoine. He was over eighty, with a face deeply etched by wrinkles and what would have been a leonine mane of pure white hair if it hadn’t been for the monk’s tonsure shorn into it, symbolising the crown of thorns worn by Christ.

The first thing Ben noticed about Père Antoine was his eyes. They didn’t belong in an old man’s face. They seemed to glow like those of a happy child, as if filled with some kind of inner light that poured out of him. Ben found them mesmerising.

The two men spoke in French, after Ben explained that his was fluent and he had lived in France for a while. The old man smiled at the discovery that ‘Ben’ was short for Benedict, and addressed him by the French version of the name, Benoît. He gently invited him to talk about himself, which was something Ben found difficult. Secrecy was second nature to him, instilled by years of covert military operations and the work he’d done since leaving the army. But that wasn’t the only reason it was difficult for him to speak openly. Here, now, in the presence of the old monk, Ben felt a sense of shame.

‘I’ve done a lot of pretty bad things,’ he confessed.

‘Père Jacques tells me you were once a soldier. For how many years was that your occupation?’

‘Too many.’

‘During those years, Benoît, did you kill many people?’

Ben said nothing.

‘The memory of your past pains you, I see. But you atoned for your sins by leaving that path.’

‘I’m not sure if that counts as atonement, Father.’

‘It depends on the reason why you left.’

‘I didn’t like people telling me what to do.’

‘You have a problem with authority?’

‘It depends on who’s giving the orders. If it’s someone I respect, that’s one thing. If it’s some government stooge with a secret power agenda who expects me to do his dirty work for him on the pretext of protecting the realm, that’s another.’

‘You did not find your realm worth protecting?’

‘Not if it meant taking the lives of innocent people whose countries we invaded simply for reasons of territory and economics. That troubled me then. And it troubles me even more now, when I think about the things I did.’

‘And if your order came from God?’

‘I’m still waiting for that one,’ Ben said. ‘That’s the truth.’

‘Perhaps it has come already, but you do not see it.’

Ben didn’t reply.

The old monk nodded thoughtfully and reflected for a few moments. ‘By choice, I know little about the modern world. But history, I do know. These things you tell me – it was always so. This monastery was built during the time of the First Crusade. It is convenient for us to forget that the Christian forces who established the Holy Kingdom of Jerusalem, in so doing, carried out the wholesale massacre of thousands of innocent Muslim lives. It was not an act of faith, but of pure murder.’

Ben looked at him.

‘The Church’s past is tainted by many sins, and to force good men to do evil in the name of God is but one of them.’ Père Antoine smiled sadly. ‘It surprises you, to hear me speak this way.’

It did.

‘You speak of your shame for the things you did then,’ the monk went on. ‘But the goodness in you prevailed, Benoît. You left that life behind.’

‘I tried to,’ Ben said. ‘I wanted to use what I’d learned to do some good.’ He paused as he tried to find the right words. ‘Things happen in this world. Things you couldn’t even begin to imagine from up here. K and R is just one of them.’

‘You are right. I have no idea what that means.’

‘Kidnap and ransom,’ Ben explained. ‘It’s a business, and a big one. The trade in human misery for money. The men who do it are pure bad, and too often, there’s nobody there to stop them. That was something I wanted to change.’

‘And did you?’

Ben thought of the kidnap victims he’d removed from the clutches of their captors. A long list of names and faces that he’d never forget. Many of them had been children, snatched from their homes, from schools, from cars, so as to extort ransom from their families. He wondered where they all were now. Getting on with their lives, he supposed. He wondered if they too were haunted by old memories.

‘Saving the lives of the innocent is not something of which you should be ashamed,’ Père Antoine said.

‘Yes, I saved people. But to save them, sometimes unpleasant things had to be done.’

‘Violence?’

‘Yes.’

‘Killing?’

Ben shrugged. He nodded. He glanced down as he did it. It was the first time in his life he hadn’t been able to look another man in the eye.

‘I did what I had to do to resolve the situation. Or that was how it seemed to me at the time. Perhaps there might have been another way.’

‘Perhaps. Or perhaps this was the duty that God set in your path. He has many purposes for men of courage and integrity.’

Ben smiled darkly. ‘Next you’ll be telling me that He moves in mysterious ways.’

Père Antoine was silent for a long time, reflecting. ‘We have talked about the past. Now let us talk about the future. You have been here long enough to have seen a little of our life. The institutional framework by which we live is somewhat rigid, some might say uncompromising.’

‘Believe me, Father, I’ve been used to that.’

‘Very well. Then consider our vocation to solitude. It requires a strong will and a balanced judgement. It is not for everyone.’

‘I love this place,’ Ben said. ‘I feel at peace here.’

‘Because of what you have found here, or because of what you believe you have run away from?’

Ben didn’t reply.

The old man smiled. ‘You may wish to dwell a little longer on that question. And ask yourself how truly you would be suited to life here. It takes time to adapt to it, learning to still the mind, quiet the senses and calm the spirit. It is a purely contemplative life, leaving behind all that we have known previously. He who remains in the Charterhouse has felt in the very centre of his soul a call so profound that no words can truly describe it. It is the revelation of the Absolute. But even this is only the beginning of a quest to which one’s entire life, in all its aspects and for however long we may continue in this world, shall be utterly devoted. We seek only God. We live only for God, to whom we surrender body and soul. “You have seduced me, Lord, and I let myself be seduced.”’

‘Jeremiah, chapter twenty, verse seven,’ Ben said. He hadn’t forgotten everything from his past theology studies, even though they’d been scattered across the course of twenty-odd years – a dismal stop-start pattern of failure and indecision. There’d been times in his life when he’d wanted nothing more than to enter the Church, convinced that was the only way he’d find the peace of mind he needed so much. At other times that notion had seemed ridiculous, a crazy and irrelevant pipe dream. In any case, life had always got in the way of his plans and he’d found himself being dragged around the world instead, with people endlessly trying to shoot him, stab him, or blow him up. Routine stuff. You almost got used to it eventually.

If the monk was impressed by Ben’s knowledge of the Bible, he didn’t say or do anything to show it. He went on, ‘Therefore we cast ourselves into the abyss, and cut ourselves off from all that is not God. For our new life to begin, first there must be a kind of death. The death of our old selves.’ He paused, and those glowing eyes seemed to bore into Ben. ‘Are you ready for that, Benoît?’

‘I’ve faced death often enough,’ Ben said. ‘And wished I could leave my old self behind somehow.’

‘It is the reason you tried to lose yourself in wine.’

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Ben said.

‘Can you live without it? The drink?’ For a moment, the monk’s eyes were as sharp as the directness of his question.

Ben paused before he replied. ‘I won’t lie to you, Father. It isn’t an easy thing to give up. But I feel a little stronger every day.’

The old man smiled again and fetched a small bottle from the folds of his robe. ‘Here. It will bring strength, health, and vigour.’

‘What is it?’ Ben said, gazing at the bottle.

‘Just a humble tonic that I make myself, using water from the mountain and some simple ingredients. It contains no alcohol. I have been drinking it for many years. Try it.’

Ben uncapped the bottle, sniffed, sipped. It didn’t smell of anything and had only a faintly bitter taste.

‘A little each day is all you need,’ the old man said, then fell into a state of very still contemplation that seemed to last for ever in the silence of the room.

Finally he said, ‘Very well. I believe you should remain with us a little longer, so that you may decide whether it is truly the path you wish to pursue. There is no hurry. If, after this period of time, you still wish to remain and it is deemed that you are fit and suited for this way of life, you may formally request to be admitted to the order, subject to its rules, to live at God’s disposal alone, in solitude and stillness, in an everlasting prayer and a joyful penitence. The Father Master of Novices will visit you regularly and watch over your training.’

‘Thank you, Father.’

‘Tomorrow you will move to your own monastic quarters, so that you may share the life we live. You will come and see me here once a week from now on, and we will talk.’

On his way out, Ben noticed the chessboard on a table in the shadows.

‘I find that it quietens the mind,’ the old man said. When Ben looked surprised that such things were allowed in the monastery, the prior explained that since the death of the very ancient monk who had been his chess partner, he’d had nobody to play against but himself.

‘It’s a win for white in four moves, maybe five,’ Ben said, gazing at the board.

‘You play? Good. Then when you visit me each week, we shall play together.’

Ben’s cell was more spacious than he’d expected. It was on two floors, with its own carpentry workshop and even a little walled garden outside. He began to understand that a Carthusian monk’s lifestyle of solitary contemplation required just a little elbow room to prevent him from going mad. He had the minimum of simple pine furniture, a small desk at which to read and eat, his bunk, and a lectern for praying on bended knees, where a member of the order would spend much of his day. A small, shuttered window in his main living space overlooked the mountainside and the forested valley below. With the coming of spring, he planted some seeds in his garden and watched the green shoots grow each day. He took some of the prior’s ‘little tonic’ each day, too, after his morning exercises and again at night before bed. It seemed to be working for him. Whether it was that, or the fact that he’d stopped drinking for the first time in his adult life, combined with the simple diet of wholesome home-grown food, goat’s milk and pure spring water, he’d never felt so healthy and full of vitality.

That spring, a new duty he added to his daily routine was helping the monks brew their beer, which they stored in kegs in a vault beneath the monastery and sold to make a little money for the place’s upkeep. A few months ago, it might have bothered him to have been around the beer. Now, he was barely tempted by it.

Besides, he enjoyed the company. He was getting to know them all better now. With the onset of the warmer weather, more time was spent in the neatly tended gardens and the surrounding wildflower meadows where the long-horned cattle roamed and grazed. Away from the monastery buildings, Ben discovered that the rule of silence was far less strictly observed. The monks would sit clustered together on benches during their downtime in the spring sunshine, enjoying the Alpine views, their wrap-around shades and Aviator Ray-Bans a strange contrast to their robes as they shared animated discussions and laughed and joked together, like regular guys.

Now and then a jet plane would fly over, tracking across the pure blue sky above the mountains. It was becoming strange to imagine that there was a whole other world still out there.

This place grew on you, for sure.

Chapter Five

It was just after dawn on a late May morning, and Ben was finishing up the day’s first punishing bout of exercises before going about his duties, when there was an unexpected knock at the door of his cell. He quickly shrugged on his robe, opened the door and saw that his visitor was the Father Master of Novices.

Père Jacques pulled back the hood of his habit to reveal his tonsured scalp, and spoke in his usual hushed, benevolent tone. ‘I have come to ask a service from you, Benoît.’

Ben was getting used to being called that. ‘Whatever I can do, Father.’

In as few words as possible, the monk explained that it was about the beer. Ben already knew that once every few months the store of monastic ale, that had been ageing in barrels in the cellar deep beneath the monastery, needed to be brought up and loaded on the prehistoric flatbed truck that was the monks’ only motor vehicle. He also knew that it was the job of Frère Patrice, one of the lay brothers, to don everyday clothing and drive the laden truck down the winding mountain road into Briançon. There, it was passed on to the wholesaler’s agent who handled the distribution of the quality brew across France. It was a useful source of revenue for the monastery, as well as a proud centuries-old tradition.

But, as the Father Master of Novices explained with a frown, Frère Patrice had twisted his ankle badly a few days earlier after tripping down the refectory steps, and was unable to fulfil his duty today. Would Benoît agree to take his place?

Ben said that he’d be delighted to help in any way he could. He felt pleased and honoured that he’d been asked. It meant that he was trusted. It meant he was starting to be considered one of the community.

Before anything else could happen, though, first the beer barrels had to be brought up from the cellars. Like everything else here, that had to be done the old-fashioned way, which meant the hard way: at least eight hours’ worth of tough physical labour carrying and rolling each forty-gallon iron-banded oak barrel separately all the way up from the bowels of the monastery, to be loaded on the truck ready to be taken down the mountain first thing the following morning, in time for the rendezvous with the distributor in Briançon.

Ben welcomed the task. Soon afterwards, he joined a small gang of lay brothers assigned to cellar duty. Their names were Gilles, Marc and Olivier. After brief, solemn greetings they got started.

Ben had never visited this part of the monastery before, deep below the main buildings. Olivier led the way with a lantern down endless twisting, steeply descending passages. Their steps left a line of prints in the dust as they walked. The little light the swaying lantern threw off glistened against the condensation that trickled from the mildewed stone walls, and every sound echoed deep in the shadows. Ben ran his fingers along the damp rock and could feel the tool marks where this space had been carved out of the solid heart of the mountain a thousand years ago, a feat of unimaginable difficulty. The further they descended, the more it felt like going down into a mineshaft, and he wondered how the hell they were meant to drag the beer barrels all the way up to ground level. It seemed like the kind of punitive exercise the army would delight in inflicting on raw recruits.

He soon found out the answer. A system of ropes and pulleys had been in use for about the last five hundred years – pretty newfangled technology so far as the monks were concerned – to carry the barrels up from the murky cellar. Quite how not installing some proper electric lighting down there was supposed to bring them closer to God, Ben didn’t know and didn’t ask. At least the rope and tackle system helped them avoid the very real possibility of meeting Him all too soon by being crushed to death while hauling their load up the steep, narrow stone steps in the semi-darkness. But to shift them from the cellar’s iron-studded oak doors all the way to the former stable near the main gate where the truck was housed, it was going to be a simple, old-fashioned muscle job. Whatever the monastery earned in the way of revenue from this, Ben and the gang were going to earn it on their behalf today.

After four hours of sweaty work, they’d managed to shift more than half the barrels up to ground level, and the lay brothers looked more than ready for a break. It was agreed that they’d take half an hour to rest their tired arms and backs, then meet up again here to finish the job.

While the others went off to nap, or pray, or however they saw fit to spend the next thirty minutes, Ben wandered the underground passages. He used the flickering lantern to light his way, marvelling at how few people must have been here over the course of so many centuries. Some of the passages went down even deeper; he reckoned he must be a hundred and fifty feet or more below the monastery. The floor was thick with the dust of ages.

He supposed these might have been escape tunnels for the monks during turbulent periods in history, or hiding places in which they could take refuge from marauding enemies. Nobody of a claustrophobic nature would have wanted to venture down here, especially as some of the carved-out stone channels weren’t much more than child-sized. At just a shade under six foot, Ben had to bend right down to be able to explore them. He’d always been fascinated by secret passages, ancient tunnels, hidden places. Maybe Freud would have said he was subconsciously looking for somewhere to escape from the world, hide from life. Maybe Ben would have told the old boy where to shove his psychoanalytic theories.

Just as he was thinking he should start making his way back, Ben saw tracks in the dust. Moments later, he noticed a strange pale glow up ahead, shining on the rough rock wall like the kind of natural phosphorescence he’d seen in caves in the Middle East. He paused, mystified, then curiosity drew him towards the light.

Suddenly the narrow walls seemed to fall away and the echo of his footsteps sounded much deeper. Ben realised that the tunnel had opened up into an underground cavern. Its sides and ceiling were too angular to be natural. He raised the lantern to spread its reach and peered around him, fascinated and wondering what this place was, or had once been.

But he was even more fascinated by the strange glow, which he now realised was shining from the mouth of a secondary passage to the left that led away from the opened-out chamber. Looking down, he saw that the tracks in the dust were leading that way. He followed, having to bow his head in the constricted passage. After a few yards, he found himself advancing on the source of the strange light.

It wasn’t any kind of natural phosphorescence, but very much man-made: a small illuminated rectangle surrounded by a halo of light. It was moving slightly as the person holding it sat crouched against the rock wall, hunched over the tiny screen.

As Ben edged closer, he heard a gasp and the light darted away and went out. He shone the lantern, and instantly recognised the startled face that was gaping at him from the darkness.

‘Roby?’

‘Oh – it’s you, Benoît. You frightened me.’ Their voices reverberated inside the tunnel.

‘What are you doing down here?’ Ben asked. He already knew the answer, and what the novice had whipped out of sight to hide in his robe. ‘Where did you get the mobile phone from, Roby?’

Roby hung his head in embarrassment. ‘I – I – you won’t—’

‘Tell?’ Ben smiled and shook his head. ‘Of course I wouldn’t.’

‘Thierry gave it me,’ Roby said, referring to another of the younger lay brothers whom Ben didn’t know so well. ‘You can go on the internet with it.’