Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk

Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk

Boris Akunin

Random House Publishing Group (2008)

Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, General, Historical

Fictionttt Mystery & Detectivettt Generalttt Historicalttt

In the middle of the night, a disheveled and badly frightened monk arrives at the doorstep of Bishop Mitrofanii of Zavolzhsk, crying: “Something’s wrong at the Hermitage!” The Hermitage is the centuries-old island monastery of New Ararat, known for its tradition of severely penitent monks, isolated environs, and a mental institution founded by a millionaire in self-imposed exile. Hearing the monk’s eerie message, Mitrofanii’s befuddled but sharp-witted ward Sister Pelagia begs to visit New Ararat and uncover the mystery. Traditions prevail–no women are allowed–and the bishop sends other wards to test their fates against the Black Monk that haunts the once serene locale. But as the Black Monk claims more victims–including Mitrofanii’s envoys–Pelagia goes undercover to see exactly what person, or what spirit, is at the bottom of it all. Fans of Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog, the first book in Akunin’s Pelagia trilogy, will be instantly mesmerized–and frightened–by this latest foray into Zavolzhsk’s spiritual underworld.Praise:“For all his status as a globe-circling bestseller, Akunin keeps faith in his sleekly engineered and allusive whodunnits with the classical virtues of Russian prose. . . . That polish lends his books a peculiar charm.”–The Independent (London)“Readers can hear echoes of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Anton Chekov in whodunits that, because of their literary overtones, can be guiltlessly consumed as entertainment.”–Los Angeles TimesFrom the Trade Paperback edition.

ALSO BY BORIS AKUNIN

Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog

THE ERAST FANDORIN MYSTERIES

The Winter Queen

The Turkish Gambit

Murder on the Leviathan

The Death of Achilles

Special Assignments

Prologue

THE SQUARE ONTO which the windows of the district court looked out was already almost completely empty by this hour in the early evening. Two mongrels were yelping lazily at each other beside a streetlamp and a boy in a cloth jacket and blacked boots was hopping over a puddle on one leg But from the far end of the square, where it runs into Malaya Kupecheskaya Street, there came the resounding clop of hooves over cobblestones, the rumbling of wheels, and the jingling of harness. These combined sounds approached at a brisk pace, and soon it was possible to make out a lathered pair of piebald grays pulling along a sprung carriage. Standing on the box, waving a whip, was a dusty monk in a black cassock that fluttered behind him in the wind, and his head was uncovered, so that his long locks were tousled and tangled. Then it became clear that the forehead of this terrible coachman was covered in blood and his eyes were bulging out of his head. The small number of people in the street who saw this sight all froze on the spot.

Approaching the court building, the monk pulled back on the reins, halting the dashing horses, jumped to the ground, and shouted to Pelagia.

But then, we shall not relate here exactly what the messenger shouted, because that will be the beginning of an entirely different story, one even stranger than the story of the white bulldog.

Pelagia turned back quickly toward the bishop. Mitrofanii had not seen the strange monk or heard his shout, but he immediately sensed that something was wrong. He pushed the correspondent aside gently but firmly and…

The Appearance of ‘Basilisk

SEVERAL LONG STRIDES brought him to the side of the nun. Glancing out the window of the courthouse and seeing the lathered horses and the disheveled monk, he knitted his bushy brows sternly.

“He shouted to me: ‘Mother, disaster! He's here already? Where's His Reverence?’ ” Pelagia told the bishop in a low voice.

At the word
disaster
Mitrofanii nodded in satisfaction, as if he had been expecting nothing less from this interminably long day that seemed determined never to end. From the window he beckoned with his finger to the tattered and dusty messenger (the general manner and loud shouting of this monk, who had arrived in such a rush from God only knew where, left no doubt that he was in fact a messenger, and one bearing bad tidings), as if to say, Right, come up here and we'll take a look at you.

With a rapid bow to the bishop that reached almost down to the ground, the monk dropped the reins and dashed into the court building, elbowing aside the public on its way out after the trial. The appearance of this servant of God, with his head uncovered and his forehead scratched and bleeding, was so unusual that people glanced around at him, some in curiosity, others in alarm. The tumultuous discussion of the recently concluded hearing and its remarkable verdict was suddenly broken off. It looked as though some new remarkable Event was in the offing, or had even, perhaps, already taken place.

Such is always the way of things in quiet backwaters like our peaceful town of Zavolzhsk: five or ten years of peace and quiet, drowsy torpor, and then suddenly one hurricane blast following another, bending the very bell towers down to the ground.

The ominous herald ran up the white marble staircase. On the upper landing, below the scales held aloft by blind-eyed Justice, he hesitated for a moment, uncertain which way to turn, to the right or the left, but immediately spotted the knot of correspondents from Russia's two capital cities and the two figures in black robes, one large and one small, in the far corner of the lobby: the Reverend Mitrofanii and beside him the sister in spectacles who had been standing in the window.

The monk's massive boots roused a thunderous echo as he dashed across the floor toward the bishop, howling to him from a distance: “My lord, he's here! Close by already! Coming after me! Huge and black!”

The journalists from St. Petersburg and Moscow, including some genuine luminaries of this profession, who had come to Zavolzhsk for the sensational trial, stared in bewilderment at this wild-looking figure in a cassock.

“Who's coming? Who's black?” His Grace thundered. “Speak clearly. Who are you? Where from?”

“The humble monk Antipa from Ararat,” the agitated fellow said with a hasty bow. He reached up to remove his skullcap, but it wasn't there—he had lost it somewhere. “Basilisk is coming, who else! He himself, our patron! He has come forth from the hermitage. Your Reverence, order the bells to be rung and the icons to be brought out! Saint John's prophecy is being fulfilled! ‘For lo, I come soon, and bring vengeance with me, to render unto each according to his deeds!’ It is the end!” he howled. “The end of everything!”

The big-city types didn't seem concerned. They weren't frightened by the news of the end of the world; they just pricked up their ears and moved a little closer to the monk, but the courthouse janitor, who had already begun pushing his broom along the corridor, froze on the spot when he heard this terrible cry, dropping his implement of labor and crossing himself hastily.

The herald of the Apocalypse was too anguished and terrified to say anything else coherent—he began shaking all over, and tears began coursing down his stark white face and his beard.

As always in critical situations, His Grace demonstrated a most efficacious decisiveness. Following the ancient precept according to which the best remedy for hysterics is a good, hard slap, Mitrofanii gave the sobbing man two resounding blows to the cheeks with his weighty hand, and the monk immediately stopped shaking and howling. His eyes went blank and he hiccuped. Then, building on his success, the bishop seized the messenger by the collar and dragged him toward the nearest door, which led into the court archives. Sister Pelagia gave a gasp of pity at the sound of the slaps and then trotted after them.

The archivist was just settling down to enjoy some tea following the conclusion of the court session, but the bishop merely glanced at him with one eyebrow raised, and the court official disappeared in a flash. The three ecclesiastics were left alone in the government office.

The bishop sat the sobbing Antipa down on a chair and thrust the barely begun glass of tea under his nose: Take that, drink it. He waited while the monk took a drink with his teeth rattling against the glass, and wetted his constricted throat, then asked impatiently, “Well, what has happened over there in Ararat? Tell me.”

The correspondents were left facing a locked door. They stood there for a while, repeating the mysterious words
basilisk
and
Ararat
over and over again, and then gradually began to disperse, still in a state of total perplexity. That was natural enough—they were all strangers, people who knew nothing of our Zavolzhian holy places and legends. Local people would have understood immediately.

However, since our readers may include some outsiders who have never been to the province of Zavolzhie—or might never even have heard of it—before recounting the conversation that ensued in the archive room we will provide several explanations, which while they might appear excessively lengthy are nonetheless essential to an understanding of the narrative that follows.

WHERE WOULD BE the most appropriate place to start?

Probably with Ararat. Or rather, New Ararat, a famous monastery located in the far north of our extensive but little-populated province. There, on the forested islands amidst the waters of the Blue Lake, which in its dimensions resembles a sea (that is what the simple folk call it, the Blue Sea), holy monks have taken refuge from the vanity and malice of the world since ancient times. There have been periods when the monastery fell into decline and neglect, so that only a small handful of anchorites were left living in isolated cells and hermitages across the entire archipelago, but it never became completely deserted, not even during the Time of Troubles.

There was one special reason for this tenacious grasp on life, and it goes by the name of Basilisk's Hermitage—but we shall tell you about that a little further on, for the hermitage has always led an existence almost separate from the actual monastery itself. In this nineteenth century, under the influence of the beneficial conditions of our own calm and peaceful times, the monastery has blossomed quite magnificently— initially owing to the fashion for northern holy places that became widespread among well-to-do pilgrims, and in very recent times thanks to the efforts of the present archimandrite, Father Vitalii II, who bears that title because in the last century the monastery had another father superior with the same name.

This exceptional servant of the church has raised New Ararat to unprecedented heights of prosperity. When he was instructed to take charge of the quiet island monastery, the reverend father rightly decided that Fashion is a fickle creature, and before she could turn the gaze of her favor to some other, no less venerable monastic institution he needed to extract as much benefit as possible from the flow of donations.

Father Vitalii began by replacing the former monastery hotel, which was dilapidated and poorly maintained, with a new one, opening a splendid eating house with special dishes for the fasts, and organizing boat rides around the waterways and bays, so that the well-to-do visitors would be in no hurry to depart from those blessed shores, which in their beauty, the freshness of their air, and their natural serenity are in no wise inferior to the finest Finnish resorts. And then, by the skillful expenditure of the surplus funds accumulated in this manner, he set about gradually establishing a complex and highly profitable local economy, with mechanized farms, an icon-painting factory, a fishing flotilla, smoking sheds, and even a small hardware factory that produced the finest bolts and catches in the whole of Russia. He also built a water main, and even a railway from the quayside to the warehouses. Some of the more experienced monks complained that life in New Ararat had become unredemptive, but their voices had a fearful ring and their complaint hardly even filtered through to the outside world at all, being drowned out by the cheerful clatter of the intensive construction work. On the main island of Canaan the father superior erected numerous new buildings and churches, which were most impressive in terms of their size and magnificence, although, in the opinion of connoisseurs of architecture, they were not always distinguished by elegant and flawless taste.