When the roads became overgrown, there was no more transit; when there was no more transit, there was no more trade; when there was no more trade, there was no common tongue. And the bones in Minicius the eunuch’s hand hurt. It was night and the candles were nearly melted and the inkwell was empty and I said to young Anastasio, “Go to the cellar. Take four branches of hawthorn. Rive each with a hatchet in the water. Then leave them at the bank.”

Brother Minicius sulked. There was no unguent for his hand.

We stripped the branches of their bark, barefoot in the shallows, habits hiked to our knees. My ankle sundered a shoal of guppies. Brother Felix smiled and there was daylight behind him. We soaked the bark till the Sabbath went. We boiled the water till it thickened black. We added the dregs of the communion wine and prayed to our Holy Mother to forgive us. In goatskin bags it hung from a clothesline in the summer heat. When it dried, we added salt and iron and over the fire we stirred. Brother Anthemius said it smelled of sulfur and he wrinkled his face to sneeze. We snickered and the Prior glared at us and we went mum with thin smiles.

Then the bones in Brother Minicius’s hand did not hurt and there was no need of candles for God was generous and light flooded our chamber. With pumice he scraped the palimpsest of pagan doctrine. He brought quill to vellum with much pressure and the corner of his “A” was blotted. But he wrote with fluency and discretion over the faded scrawl; They looked like little bird tracks, those letters, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Not even his fluvial hand nor meanings therewith could divert me. My heart took in their sounds. My lips formed their shapes alone in my bed. And Deus shook the benighted trees.