Brother Bernard's Requiem (standard:fantasy, 8110 words)
Author: Gavin J. Carr	Added: Mar 26 2005	Views/Reads: 3129/2085	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
1535 - King Henry VIII will shortly begin the dissolution of the monasteries. A monk travels to Istanbul on a mission of hope, to find a relic and stop the destruction.

The call to prayer. 

The sound rose above buildings and drifted down side-streets.  It hung
listlessly with the smoke from charcoal braziers and mingled with the 
pungent scent of spice.  It became part of a suffusion; a vibrant 
montage of sights, sounds and smells greater than the sum of its parts; 
a sensory assault that seeped gradually through the pores like a slow 
marinade. 

This was Istanbul. 

Brother Bernard, seated on the back of a donkey, tilted his head and
listened.  Strange that he found the sound nostalgic, he thought.  It 
was reminiscent of desert sands and far off oases; of journeys by camel 
and the searing, merciless sun.  Brother Bernard had never seen the 
desert or sat by an oasis, and he had certainly never journeyed by 
camel.  But still, somehow the sound was nostalgic; not so much a call 
to prayer as a call to remember. 

The journey had been long and arduous.  He had been travelling for
months over dusty roads and through countryside filled with brigands.  
It was here that he fully realized the wisdom of the Lord.  For, in the 
wilderness, the meek inherited the earth and the first truly became the 
last.  While other travellers – those who flaunted their wealth and 
status – were hounded and robbed, Bernard – a poor monk dressed in 
threadbare robes – remained unmolested.  If only they knew, he thought. 
 If only they knew about the purses of gold he carried, then, he 
suspected, things would be very different.  But as it was he was left 
alone, while the servants of mammon suffered – a suitable reward for 
the sin of pride. 

Bernard leaned forward and tapped his guide on the shoulder. 

He had met Mehmet on the outskirts of the city, a poor farmer who earned
extra money acting as a guide.  A heathen, but still, a good man who 
appeared trustworthy and spoke passable Greek. 

“How much further?” asked Bernard. 

Mehmet steadied the donkey's head and looked back.  “Not much further.” 

Bernard nodded.  It would be good to spend the night indoors.  Although
he was used to the life of an aesthetic, there was a limit to his 
endurance.  The endless nights sleeping under the stars and the hours 
spent in saddle and on foot had begun to wear him down. 

He had spent thirty years in the monastery, isolated, cut off in
self-imposed exile.  To him the world had been frightful and 
frightening.  An evil and random place where hunger ravaged the poor 
and chaos ran free like a ravenous wolf.  When he had joined the order 
it had been with relief.  He needed the silence, the time to think and 
to forget.  He had tried life in the outside world – the pleasures of 
homestead and family.  But pain had found him.  No matter what defences 
you build, he had realized, in the outside world pain was king and 
misery queen.  He had been scarred, stripped of everything he had loved 
and left as hollow as a beggar's belly.  He had sincerely believed that 
he could never again find solace in the outside world.  But when he 
started his journey – those long, long months ago – he had been filled 
with a quiet wonder.  The world was a beautiful place when not viewed 
through the veil of pain and grief.  He had forgotten that people could 
be kind as well as cruel and that hope could blossom even on the 
stoniest ground.  The peasants suffered – there was no denying that – 
but their lives went on and they scraped out their own meagre portion 
of happiness, just as they scraped their own meagre living from the 
land. 

But now, with his destination almost reached, he felt the weight of his
sixty years.  He was no longer a young man.  If the Abbot had not 
personally asked for Bernard to undertake the journey then he would 
have demanded that one of the younger monks travel in his stead. 

Mehmet led him down a side street strewn with rubbish and slumbering
beggars.  At the far end, visible in the moonlight, Bernard could see a 
pair of rusting iron gates set into a wall of whitewashed stone. 



Click here to read the rest of this story (932 more lines)