Chapter One
There are thirty-two of them. On this autumn day in 1986, thirty-two are still living in this monastery at the end of a rutted track that would make any traveler blench. Nothing has changed in the past thousand years. Not the steepness of the path nor the vertiginous drop. Thirty-two stout hearts—it takes courage to live on the edge of an abyss—thirty-two bodies that were strong in their youth. Some hours from now, they will be thirty-one.

The monks are gathered in a circle around the dying man. There have been many such circles, many farewells, since the walls of the Sacra were first built. There have been moments of grace, moments of doubt, moments when bodies steeled themselves against the looming darkness. There have been and will be other departures, so they wait patiently.

This dying man is unlike the others. He alone has never taken the vows. Yet he has been allowed to stay here for forty years. Each time the subject has been mentioned, each time the question has been raised, a man in purple robes has come—never the same man twice—and it is he who decides. He stays. The dying man is as much a part of the monastery as the cloisters, the columns, the Romanesque capitals, whose conservation owes much to his talent. So let us not complain; he has paid for his sojourn here in kind.

From beneath the wool blanket, only his hands emerge. They are balled into fists either side of his head: an eighty-two-year-old child in the throes of a nightmare. His skin is sallow, like parchment stretched so sharply over jutting bones that it might break. His forehead gleams, made waxen by his fever. It was inevitable that one day his strength would fail. A shame that he never answered their questions. But a man is entitled to his secrets.

Besides, they feel as if they know. Not everything, but the most important facts. Sometimes their opinions differ. To stave off boredom, the monks find they are as gossipy as fishwives. He is alternately a criminal, a defrocked priest, a political refugee. Some say he is being held against his will—a theory that holds little water, since they have seen him leave and come back of his own volition; others claim he is there for his own safety. Then there is the most popular theory, and the most clandestine, since in a monastery, romance must be smuggled in: he is there to watch over her. She who waits, in her marble shroud, a few hundred yards from his spartan cell. She who has been waiting now for forty years. All the monks in the Sacra have seen her once. All would like to see her again. They need only ask permission from the abbot, Padre Vincenzo, but few dare to do so—out of fear, perhaps, of the impure thoughts that are said to come to those who come too close to her. And monks have more than enough impure thoughts without finding themselves pursued, in the inky darkness, by dreams with the face of an angel.

The dying man struggles, opens his eyes then closes them again. One of the monks swears he sees a flicker of joy—he is mistaken. Someone gently dabs a cool flannel over his brow, his lips.

The dying man is still struggling, and for once, all the brothers agree.

He is trying to say something.